He's on the appointments committee at his school and says "most of the clinical professors whose work we have reviewed this semester have pursued a model of inculcating left-liberal political values in students and deploying those students to advance left-liberal political causes."
Only most? Not all? Who were the ones who didn't? What are the forces that cause the applicants for this type of legal academic work to lean left? The "regular" professors tend to lean left as well, so it's only a question of degree, but clinical lawprof work tends to pay a lot less and to involve less pleasurable tasks than classic lawprof work.
Bainbridge's law school is UCLA. Here's a list of their clinics, including some that don't seem too lefty, like the Business Deals Clinic and Mergers & Acquisitions. But, realistically, you can see why someone with expertise practicing law in business deals mergers & acquisitions — the kind that would impress a law school appointments committee — has an incentive to stay in practice and not to shift into clinical teaching. The standard lawprof job has its obvious rewards, but why clinical teaching?
The system is founded on the reward the accrues to those with the left-liberal political agenda that Bainbridge rails against. It's baked into the cake.
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"It's baked into the cake."
The problem is all the sweet green icing flowing down.
It's in the ABQ Morning Journal - Democrat this morning that UNM will make a three credit hour course in "diversity" a requirement for graduation.
The Diversity hysteria, that poorly disguised argument for the racial and sexual quota system, is the Gospel at the law firms with which I am familiar.
Given that back pressure from future employers, what other result can you expect at the academic level?
Seldom discussed historical reason for this... the dominance of Jews in the legal system, and Jewish suspicion and hatred of the Goyim (with some historical reason).
On the coastal cities, where much of the liberal elite (especially Jews) live, the lower and middle class gentile white guy is the personification of the devil. Especially white guys from the South. Hatred and derision of Southern white guys is a constant in the Northeast.
Not surprisingly, the Democratic Party's primary political argument has become that lower and middle class gentile, straight white guys are the devil.
The clinic I participated in just did retail level general civil litigation; divorce, guardianship, quiet title, etc.
There was nothing political about it. The criminal clinic on the other hand (nowadays) seems to focus on frivolous 1983 actions against the state.
"On the coastal cities, where much of the liberal elite (especially Jews) live, the lower and middle class gentile white guy is the personification of the devil. Especially white guys from the South. Hatred and derision of Southern white guys is a constant in the Northeast.
"Not surprisingly, the Democratic Party's primary political argument has become that lower and middle class gentile, straight white guys are the devil."
Yelling Tom, you're off your meds again.
This was already SOP at my law school when I entered in 1979.
Cookie, you're Exhibit A in this process.
Your political act is a bizarre attempt to play the "good white man," and thus avoid the evil eye.
You're a minstrel, dancing like crazy to prove that you're not one of the bad white men.
Pathetic. I see a lot of it.
It's time to state the obvious.
The first principle of the Democratic Party is racial hatred of straight white guys.
The Democratic Party is openly and proudly racist.
The long march through our institutions was a complete and thorough success.
'Baked into the cake' is a perfect description.
It's why the ATLA (now called the American Association for Justice) is 100% lefty Democrat.
But doctors are nearly uniformly lefties, too, from the same sort of indoctrination and from the same student selection criteria.
I have no solution for it, other than time, for collectivism always and everywhere fails, often quite horribly.
The whole culture is left leaning from education, entertainment, news media etc. It's the default in general not just for the elite law school profs.
The clinics should send law students out to assist sole-practitioners and small lawfirms. Give them a bit more of a taste for law as a profession. And a perspective they won't gain from their first few years at a big lawfirm, where all they'll do is due diligence or document review.
Or what echo apparently experienced. That sounds good too.
@ST,
On the coastal cities, where much of the liberal elite (especially Jews) live, the lower and middle class gentile white guy is the personification of the devil. Especially white guys from the South. Hatred and derision of Southern white guys is a constant in the Northeast.
As a Southerner who lives in the NE, what you say is sad but true. And as a southerner who is married to a southern Jew, I can say that, while American Jews have a well-deserved reputation as the most educated of American ethnic groups, their grasp of American sociology is rather sketchy at best, e.g. their strange sense of kinship with blacks, the group that since 1965 has had the highest percentage of antisemitism..
YoungHegelian. It gets better. Every northern Jew I have known who has moved to Atlanta, a predominately black city, has quickly scooted out to the northern lily white suburbs occupied mainly by white northerners.
@Michael,
I once worked with another southerner who was married to a Jewish woman from Ohio, and all three of us laughed when she told the story about the relatives who were worried that when their daughter flew down to Birmingham on business, that the Klan would meet her at the airport.
I only wish I was making this stuff up.
Shouting Thomas,
Please check the frequency settings on your transmitter--you seem to be getting a little crosstalk from the Cedarford Channel.
Most law school clinics are for the poor, so this is to be expected.
@mccullough,
Most law school clinics are for the poor, so this is to be expected
So, you're saying that the only way to help the poor is through left-wing nostrums?
Many a right-wing congregation might take issue with that, doncha think?
YoungHegelian: My experience has been that the liberal yankess are afraid of black people and would prefer to live far far away from them. As the old saying has it, southerners hate the black race but love black people and northerners love the black race but hate black people.
@Michael,
...southerners hate the black race but love black people and northerners love the black race but hate black people.
There's some truth to that, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it as the foundation for bettering American race relations.
I think that Northerners see blacks as yet another ethnic group. They thought, in the days of the civil rights struggle, that, when the structures of segregation were removed, that the black community would blossom like the Jews & Irish before them. It, sadly, didn't turn out that way.
There is something truly unique in the American black experience, and its essence continues to stymie us all. The experience of your transplanted northerners in the face of just too much reality is just one aspect of our national confusion.
Left-wing ideology is premised on the establishment of monopolies or monopolistic practices through granted (e.g. democratic leverage) or coerced authority. It is designed to exploit those practices to consolidate capital and power under the control of a minority, which then selectively redistributes or grants favor to other individuals in order to preserve their exceptional condition. It is not incompatible with capitalism, other than a premeditated perversion of capital distribution, and marginalization or evisceration of competing interests. It is a philosophy appealing to individuals who are delusional, opportunistic, vindictive, or incapable.
That said, other ideologies are subject to corruption in the exception. There is always a need to keep the honest people honest and others from running amuck. This is where the value of empowered competing interests (ultimately individuals) is established.
YoungHegelian:
The focus should have been on rehabilitation and integration rather than redistributive change (e.g. welfare) and retributive change (e.g. affirmative action). As it is, sustaining these policies in perpetuity has served to manufacture prejudice.
Incidentally, this is not the only example where there has been an overwhelming effort to treat symptoms while ignoring or obfuscating causes. The former behavior is, after all, politically, economically, and socially profitable, in perpetuity. It is an extremely effective means to acquire and preserve democratic leverage.
YH,
I'm suggesting that young people in law school who lean left tend to think that helping the poor through legal clinics is a good thing.
I try to help the poor, but giving them free legal aid is low on the list. Not to say they might not need it, but as you note there are better ways.
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