Hirshman has this quote from Randy Barnett: "We have a media that is so uniformly Democratic, that if you’re a conservative, you’re sort of like a battered spouse... The left controls academia and the law schools and pop culture through Hollywood."
To that, Hirshman adds:
The legal profession—which holds the meetings, conferences, seminars, where so many Supreme Court justices make appearances—also skews liberal... [L]awyers as a group give more donations to the Democrats than the Republicans and to liberal causes rather than conservative causes. This pattern applies at all levels of the profession; as Barnett correctly perceived, elite law professors tend to fall way left on the political spectrum, but even big firm partners give more to D than R. And the pattern does not diminish as you move away from the experience of the Sixties. Younger lawyers actually skew more left than their elders.Of course, judges know this. It's in their self interest, if they want to look good in history, to skew left, like the legal academics. You know, I've been here in legal academia since 1984, 9 years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg took her seat on the Supreme Court. She was a federal Court of Appeals judge then and had been since Jimmy Carter appointed her in 1980. And I can remember law professors expressing dismay that she was such a disappointment, that after her first-class women's rights advocacy as a law professor, she'd turned into such a conservative.
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Awesome. The SCOTUS is just an American Idol contest.
Political journalist always over-exaggerate the attractiveness of those they cover. Do they think we don't know what John Roberts, Michelle Obama, etc. look like?
I assume it is partially to suck up to sources and partially because most subjects are so hideous, that the reasonable attractive stand out.
As you said on an earlier post, its hard to beat something with nothing.
A successful conservative court would be measured by the cases not taken and the opinions that didn't change.
Sort of like how many times your phone didn't ring.
Its the calls that get through that get your attention.
You may have to go back to law school admissions tests where conservatives may be screened out of the profession.
Of concern should be the declining LSAT scores or people applying to law schools today. It appears the best and brightest aren't applying.
Combine a filter on admissions with a lesser mind and we have a future with liberals that are even less bright and able to think for themeselves.
Asks Linda Hirshman in a New Republic article titled "John Roberts' Legacy Problem/Like it or not, liberal decisions are the ones that history celebrates. Just ask Notorious R.B.G."
It depends on who is writing the history. If you're talking about leftist academics, then yes this is true. However, there have been some conservative decisions on the 2nd Amendment and others like Citizens United that are celebrated, just not by leftists. This is yet another example of liberal media bias. It's no different than when a conservative caves on his values, liberals will say that he "has grown". That's true only from their biased perspective.
@PB
Law schools have been screening out conservative professors for years.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/11/jurors-agree-that-u-.html
Ginsberg's legal opinions aren't particularly well written. She cherry picks her precedents and makes odd remarks about how religion works. She doesn't seem to understand religions that extend their interests to more than official members of their congregations. This is a very Jewish way to look at at religion.
But her opinions are worshiped by those on the left, whether they make legal sense or not.
Short term history might certainly celebrate fools. It's not hard to think of prophets who tickled the ears of Israelite kings. But who endures? Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, et al. If it's legacy that is one's primary concern (or truth!) and not ease of life, then journalists may be safely ignored as irrelevant.
History lasts longer than the Herald Tribune and, eventually, the NY Times......Oliver Wendell Holmes refused to sign a stay of execution against Sacco-Vanzetti. He was venomously condemned by the liberal media despite all his fine work for the advancement of eugenics.......I think nowadays the Sacco thing is a footnote and his pro eugenics stance takes some explaining by his defenders......But, by and large, he is looked upon as a great man, and it is his critics who look small minded and petty.
Lawyers do not contribute to parties and candidates out of the goodness of their hearts. They want a return for their investments. It just so happens that Democrat candidates are more susceptible to the quid pro quo, and always have been.
I hate to upset staunchest conservatives, but the reason that lawyers sooner or later become liberal is that they deal with the wrecked lives of real people in need of help. Those are the needs that many immigrants from outside cultures have also had to face all their lives.
Getting government assistance is not immoral, guys. Remember FDR and the Depression. Roosevelt was a polio victim who turned from Patrician to an earlier version of Elizabeth Warren. He understood that simply refusing to give government aid in human crisis is Malthusian evil. Lawyers see that way too after a while.
Or we could just bring all the jobs back from China.
As we found out once again in Venezuela, impose "equality" and skim milk will be a luxury item.
Getting government assistance is not immoral, guys.
Condemning families to generations of government assistance through destruction of their culture and morality is immoral. That is a moral fact.
Tim in Vermont...Then let's save them and condemn them to getting a job or else.
Query: Where did the Hard Working investors ship the capital that builds industrial production facilities that can use cheap labor? We can just send the poor surplus people there.
"Getting government assistance is not immoral, guys."
Taking money from other people without their consent is not immoral?
Suppose the taxpayer is hardworking, and the person that gets the government assistance is lazy?
Government is not a charity.
You should choose another moniker, "traditionalguy."
I always thought many lawyers are liberal to ease their conscience about making money from scumbag companies. Look at Eric Holder. He's going back to the private sector to protect big companies and those who run them after protecting them as attorney general. Hillary Clinton did the same.
Big law firm partners are mostly jackasses whose kids don't like them.
If FDR sympathized with the poor, he would have given away his inheritance and made his money from work.
He just didn't like other rich people (who does). The Kennedys are the same. They expiate their guilt about their undeserved wealth by taking it out on the middle class.
Terry...Can I use Trumanguy?
You do allow for hard working poor who will take a job when available, I note. That sounds like Welfare Reform again, which everybody supports. But a knee jerk war against the vision of lazy poor getting the benefits is a sign of refusing to see reality. lawyers face reality.
Do you also oppose Handicap Reserved Spaces at parking lots? That is certainly unfair to strong people and condemns the slow walking to a life of favoritism they did not earn when what they need is a challenge to walk.
.Then let's save them and condemn them to getting a job or else.
Having a job is a good thing. People should have jobs. One of the major causes of suicide is unemployment.
What is your take on illegal immigration? Who does that hurt the most? Low skilled workers. You focus on jobs to China because that allows you to ignore the elephant in the room, which is that illegal immigration harms the poor the most. But they vote for Democrats, so it's all good, right?
How about we treat public schools like they are intended to provide a good working education rather than income for life for teachers, and financial support lines for the Democrats?
I can see how lawyers sympathize with the criminals and otherize the victims. My brother is raising a paralyzed child and his sister, children of his wife's daughter from a first marriage, because a drunk driver killed their mother, and incidentally, their sister, and what do I hear from lawyers? How bad those accused of drunk driving have it.
That kid has been paralyzed for ten years now. He is just becoming an adult, his mother has been dead for ten years and will remain so forever, as will his sister.
Those are just crime victims I know personally. I am sure you can justify it all by thinking that conservatives are bad people though.
I haven't read the article yet, but the headline is nothing but begging the question--does Hirshman do anything more in the text?
"condemn them to getting a job" - traditionalguy.
Wow! You should be president next!
"Query: Where did the Hard Working investors ship the capital that builds industrial production facilities that can use cheap labor?"
Presumably somewhere that Lisa Jackson (and her various sock puppets) couldn't regulate it out of existence.
So now Obama and the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP want to import tens of millions of peasants to take the remaining working-class jobs which could not be off-shored.
Roberts is not that good-looking, and Ginsburg is not that smart.
"lawyers face reality."
Untrue. Some lawyers deal with poor people. Others deal with people who are seeking divorce. Lawyers deal with people who want help and believe the legal system can help them. Wanting help and seeking legal help is not "reality".
Lawyers are obligated to act in their clients best legal interests.
This is not a normal human relationship, it is an artificial human relationship. It leads to many lawyers viewing clients as a collection of rights and responsibilities bestowed upon them by the state.
There are good reasons why corporations and estates have some legal rights rights just as living persons do, but it wrong to think that this elevates corporations. Instead it degrades actual human beings.
In believing this, it looks like I am the real "traditionalguy" :)
The poor we will always have with us. The rich clients need good lawyers because they have a lots of money invested to protect or to claim that never ends. Oil and Gas Lease lawyers are a big group thanks to private property.
The out of work poor only need lawyers to survive in a crisis. But Tort Reform has eliminating that help for them when it is needed the most. That Reform is simply a law taking away a legal claim which was a man's property right. It IS Socialism. But I notice that Texas never takes away a man's property rights in Oil and Gas Leases by Reforms.
Traditionalguy, you seem to have an eccentric belief that the group of self-interested individuals known collectively as "the government" has some ability to tell who really deserves the money that somehow ended up in someone else's pocket. Please explain to me how "the government" came by to acquire this God-like knowledge?
It is clear (to me, anyhow) that some people have too little money and some people have too much money. It is not clear to me how this "government" thing is able to justly decide whom is in the first category and whom is in the second category.
Speaking as a resident of the Dairy State, I have to ask: WTH is "skim-milk equality"? How is it equal if the fat has been removed?
What about people who are lactose-intolerant? Not everyone is Northern European and chugging down 16oz of icy fresh good milk every day, you know.
I'm surprised that The New Republic would admit these organizations skew left. Totally at odds with the liberal fantasy that they are, no matter how radical, moderate. Not biased, just sensible. And good.
traditionalguy said...I hate to upset staunchest conservatives, but the reason that lawyers sooner or later become liberal is that they deal with the wrecked lives of real people in need of help.
Ha! You're funny. What you're not is knowledgable about the lives and drives of most lawyers. (Here's a hint: they skew left because it's good for business.)
Lawyers skew hugely left, law professors also, but judges do not. Apparently having responsibility for making the decisions tends to prod one in the conservative direction. Weird, that.
One is reminded of Churchill: if you are not liberal when young, you have no heart, and if you are not conservative when old, you have no brain.
The people who read The New Republic mostly have good hearts. The people who write for it mostly have no brains. Happily, they provide for each other. Cheers for the free market!
The "liberal" decisions represent most of the celebrated AND condemned decisions in the court's history.
Conservative justices don't tend to make waves one way or the other. That's why liberals gave us both school desegregation and the Japanese-American internment.
the reason that lawyers sooner or later become liberal is that they deal with the wrecked lives of real people in need of help.
Lawyers' primary function is getting the government to do things for their clients.
Obviously, if you want to help people but think it is wrong to use conscription and coercion to do so, "lawyer" probably shouldn't be your first choice of career. That's like becoming a crack dealer because you want to help poor people feel better about themselves.
Give them reindeer's milk. I have read that it is especially nutritious.
Although it doesn't sound as good, Churchill didn't say "brain". He said "mind". IOW, if you are not conservative when old, you are out of your mind. You are not just stupid, you are crazy. I think he was right.
Terry 906,
Are you Jewish? Because imho, 're your last about a Jewish way to look at religion... you're not even wrong.
Chief Justice Roberts was loathe to endanger the Catholic majority of the Supreme Court. The HIV medication bill of all the priest and their victims would bankrupt the Vatican. One out of four blacks, one out of five Hispanics and one out of six Italians are high school dropous. One out of eight blacks, one out of ten Hispanics, and one out of twelve Italians (thank Fumento) have HIV/AIDS. Pope Benedict said pedophilia is not an absolute evil. Pope Francis said he would punch Charlie Hebdo, yet he tries to paint Christian Fundamentalists, those who procured liberty in American Democracy as akin to Islamic extremists. Vatican Osservatore Romano editor Vian said on May 18th that Obama "is not a pro-abortion president." Carolignian Brzezinski spawned Carter, Obama, Zia al Haq, Khomeini, and bin Laden - breaks up superpowers via Aztlan and Kosovo as per Joel Garreau's Nine Nations. Michael Pfleger and Joe Biden prove Obama is the Pope's boy. Obama is half a Kearney from County Offaly in Ireland. Talal got Pontifical medal as Fatima mandates Catholic-Muslim union against Jews (Francis Johnson, Great Sign, 1979, p. 126), Catholic Roger Taney wrote Dred Scott decision. John Wilkes Booth, Tammany Hall and Joe McCarthy were Catholics. Now Catholic majority Supreme Court. Subprime construction mobsters had hookers deliver mortgages to banks. McCain's Keeting started it all. Brzezinski set up Arab Spring and Zia, so why surprised bin Laden was in Sineurabia code? Pakistanis descend from weasels who sold their Hindu brothers into hundreds of years of islamic slavery. Ellis Island Popecrawlers brought in FDR. Since Pio Nino banned voting they consider our Constitution and laws immoral and illegitimate and think nothing of violating them or passing legislation that undermine them. They believe that they can not be fully loyal to their superiors if they do not go the extra stretch and break the law intentionally. Their slovenly, anti-intellectual work ethic produces vacuous, casuistrous blather and a tangle of hypocritical, contradictory regulations. Their clubhouse purges provided praetorian training for corporate misgovernance. They sided with the enemy in both World Wars and now, too. Every American boom has been caused by an Evangelical Revival and every major Depression by the domination of new Catholic immigrants. Ate glis-glis but blamed plague on others, now lettuce coli. Their bigotry most encouraged terror yet they reap most security funds. View this life as casuistry training to survive purgatory. Rabbi circumcises lower, Pope upper brain. Tort explosion by glib casuistry. Hollywood Joe Kennedy had Bing Crosby proselytize. Bazelya 1992 case proves PLO-IRA-KLA links. Our enemy is the Bru666elles Sineurabia feudal Axis and the only answer is alliance with Israel and India. They killed six million Jews, a million Serbs, half a million freemasons, a quarter million Gypsies, they guided the slaughter of Assyrians and Armenians, and promoted the art of genocide throughout the world now they are relentless in their year to canonize nazi pope. 9/11 was Yugo Crimean blowback: Napoleon started the crusade against the Photius Heresy to avenge his uncle, Clinton wanted to cover Pacelli's war crimes. They had no qualms hijacking American policy in Vietnam or Balkans to papal ends, but when American interests opposed those of the papacy in Iraq and Iran, they showed their true fangs (Frum, Unpatriotic Conservatives).
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