"I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down."

A column at the NYT, written by Chris Marquis, a professor at University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

When the case method is used in medicine and law, it serves a different set of goals.... In both fields, students are confronted by the messiness of reality, and the goal is to foster disciplined skepticism: ask what’s missing, challenge assumptions and test how an analysis could be wrong.

Business school cases operate on another logic.... The point is to practice acting like the person in charge....

"The study, titled 'Law Professors Prefer AI Over Peer Answers'... was conducted with 16 law professors across U.S. law schools and tested..."

"... whether large language models could serve as effective tutors for contract law courses. In a blind evaluation of nearly 3,000 anonymized comparisons, professors rated AI responses significantly higher than answers written by other professors, with AI winning 75% of head-to-head matchups.... The study is particularly notable because previous AI evaluations have focused primarily on subjects with clear right-or-wrong answers. Legal reasoning, by contrast, demands careful analysis of competing arguments and defensible conclusions.... 'These weren’t just simple questions with obvious answers. Many of them required synthesizing complex material, applying it to new situations, and explaining legal concepts in ways that would help students develop their own analytical skills.' Participants created 40 representative contracts law questions that students might ask after class or during office hours, wrote their own answers, and then evaluated responses without knowing whether they came from AI or other participating professors. The AI systems performed comparably to the best human instructor in the study...."

I'm reading "AI Outperforms Law Professors in Stanford Law Study/In a rigorous blind study, law professors overwhelmingly preferred AI-generated answers to student legal questions over answers written by fellow law professors—and flagged the AI answers as potentially misleading or harmful far less often" (Stanford Law School News and Announcements).

"Of all knowledge work, law seems almost perfectly primed for AI because so much of the work involves reading, categorising, and pattern-matching across vast reams of documents."

"It is the type of work AI does well — and tirelessly. It was reported last week that Kirkland & Ellis, the world’s largest law firm, plans to spend $500 million building a bespoke AI system to power its practice. Meanwhile, New York firm Fried Frank has just launched an AI tool designed specifically for its private equity clients, and Slaughter and May has rolled out Harvey across all its practice areas...."

From "Why top lawyers fear that AI is destroying the 'expert’s edge'/When a US law school announced a ban on the tech, some in the industry said students would lack vital skills. The signs are that ‘Big Law’ is leaning in to AI" (London Times).

Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley School of Law there's a new policy banning using A.I. for "outlining, drafting, revising, translating or editing any work submitted for credit." And law firms are complaining because they want to hire new lawyers who are good at using A.I. to do law. How are the schools supposed to teach law now? What's the good of a ban that only restricts the students who are punctilious about rules and terrified of getting caught? Why do those poor souls bear all the burdens? And how effective are law professors going to be about detecting the violations and imposing consequences? Absolutely terrible I would guess.

"But to me, a question lingers: Why?"

Writes Justice Gorsuch, concurring, alone, in William Trevor Case v. Montana, issued this morning, which held that "police officers generally do not violate a person’s Fourth Amendment rights when they enter his house without a warrant, but with an 'objectively reasonable basis' for believing someone inside is in physical danger and in need of immediate aid."

Does the Fourth Amendment tolerate this limited emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement just because five or more Justices of this Court happen to believe that such entries are “reasonable”? Or is this exception more directly “tied to the law”? Carpenter v. United States, 585 U. S. 296, 397 (2018) (GORSUCH, J., dissenting). The answer, I believe, is the latter. 

"How the Hell To Teach Constitutional Law in 2025: Twenty Questions and No Answers."

Written by Eric Segall, at Dorf on Law.

I don't teach anymore, so I don't need to answer question like this, but I'd actually love the opportunity to work this out, and I'll bet there are a lot of younger law school graduates who have the energy and dedication and brains to figure out how to teach conlaw these days. Maybe those of you who are worn out should consider retiring. Oddly enough, when I decided to retire, it was the fall of 2016, and I was sure that Hillary Clinton was about win the election and that after she appoints the successor to Justice Scalia, with 5 strong liberals on the Supreme Court, constitutional law was going to become very boring.

Much of the bulk of Segall's 20 questions is a longstanding problem in conlaw: There's too much material to cover everything or even to cover anything with enough depth. But the argument that we've got a special problem right now is summed up in the first 2 questions:

"The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary.... It has been brewing in legal academia for 20 to 30 years."

Says Elon Musk.

The left-wing ideology says the right-wing ideology is an even longer con.

Everyone's ideology says the other side's ideology is a con.

Overheard on the street during the Wisconsin protests of 2011: "All the assholes are over on the other side."

Professor vividly demonstrates the problem with the duty to retreat.

 TikTok, after the jump:

Hillary Clinton can't talk straight about whether Kamala Harris has sought out her advice on how to debate Donald Trump.

I'm reading "Hillary Clinton Has Advice on Debating Trump: ‘He Can Be Rattled’/The 2016 Democratic nominee fell short to Donald Trump, but she had strong debate moments against him. In an interview, she offered some thoughts for Kamala Harris" (NYT).

"The consensus was that I won all three debates and that I was well prepared," Mrs. Clinton said.

That rather suggests that she doesn't have the secret to besting Trump in a debate. Everyone around her told her she was winning, so she knows what it means to win. Obviously not.

And this was funny:

Have you talked with Harris about this debate?

He doesn’t answer the questions. He doesn’t come with any specifics. It appears from the reporting that he is going with a scorched-earth approach and will just try to tear her down, which is his usual go-to strategy.

She didn't answer the question when she answered a question by saying "He doesn’t answer the questions." The question was "Have you talked with Harris about this debate?" I'm going to infer that the answer is no. I can also infer that one piece of advice she would give KH if she were asked is: Any question you don't want to have to answer can be reimagined as a question you do feel comfortable answering.

A new front in the battle against affirmative action?

I'm reading "Lawsuit: Northwestern’s law school is biased against White men in hiring/The complaint alleges that the private university’s law school gives hiring preference to 'mediocre' women and applicants of color" (WaPo).

A lawsuit filed Tuesday against Northwestern University opened a new front in the battle against affirmative action....

“For decades, left-wing faculty and administrators have been thumbing their noses at federal anti-discrimination statutes,” contends the suit, which was filed Tuesday in federal district court in Illinois. “They do this by hiring women and racial minorities with mediocre and undistinguished records over white men who have better credentials, better scholarship, and better teaching ability.”...

The suit names three White men it says were not hired despite strong qualifications, and names four Black women and one Black man who it alleges were offered faculty positions because of their race and/or gender, painting several of these academics in harshly unflattering terms.

This sounds not new but old to me, because I remember when the University of Wisconsin Law School was sued in exactly this way. The case went to trial, and I testified, because I'd served on the Appointments Committee. This was many years ago, and the jury found in our favor. It's very difficult to look at particular individuals who were hired and compare them to individuals who were not hired. This was decades ago, and the relevant case law has evolved since then.

Eugene Volokh is not one of the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, but the complaint contains allegations about him.

"The University of Wisconsin-Madison is at the center of another controversy this week over its diversity training program...."

"The controversy could not come at a worse time for the university, which recently agreed (after considerable debate and pushback) to cut down on its diversity-related materials in exchange for $800 million in funding from the state. The board originally refused the money rather than cut back on the training before finally yielding to the pressure. The immediate responsibility for the training material falls on the shoulders of [law school dean Daniel Tokaji] whose staff approved this mandatory training and presumably reviewed the material in advance. If they did not, they are equally at fault...."

Writes Jonathan Turley, in "Wisconsin-Madison Under Fire Over Mandatory Anti-Racism Training."

I've written about this controversy a couple times already — here and here — but I'm blogging it again for 2 reasons:

"It's totalitarian indoctrination, of course, and it's meant to be."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, about the mandatory DEI training for first-year law students at University of Wisconsin Law School (where I was a lawprof from 1984 to 2017).

Reynolds observes: "This sort of thing also creates a pervasively hostile educational environment on account of race, as courts are starting to notice."

He links to TaxProf Blog, which copies the text of Alan Rozenshtein at Volokh Conspiracy: "Mandatory DEI Trainings and Academic Freedom":

"You distance yourself from 'other' white people. You see only unapologetic bigots, card-carrying white supremacists and white people outside your own circle as 'real racists.'"

"You put other white people down, trash their work or behavior, or otherwise dismiss them. You righteously consider yourselves white people who have evolved beyond our racist conditioning. This is another level of denial. There are no 'exceptional white people.' You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are. This distancing serves only to divide you from potential allies and limit your own learning."

That's the "reality check" on item #21 of a DEI handout called "Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors That Indicate a Detour or Wrong Turn into White Guilt, Denial or Defensiveness."

In the realm of law school rankings and affirmative action: "There is no subterfuge here."

I'm reading "Law schools love to hate U.S. News rankings. But some can’t let go. Yale law’s decision to stop cooperating with the publication landed like a thunderclap. Records show what other schools thought about the 'revolution.'"

Let me drag this key passage out of the middle:

As schools weighed their decisions, some questioned the purity of the boycotters’ motives. One theory: Some schools, correctly anticipating that the Supreme Court would soon strike down race-based affirmative action, could be planning admissions changes that would hurt them in the rankings but preserve diversity. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board surmised as much, saying, “The Yale and Harvard announcements look like attempts to adapt in advance.”

When the University of Michigan’s law dean heard this theory from an alumnus, he dismissed it, saying in an email shortly after Yale’s announcement that his school’s decision to withdraw was “100% not connected to any Supreme Court ruling.”

“There is no subterfuge here,” wrote Mark West, dean at Michigan, which ranked 10th at the time.

"Are 10 minutes of shouting out of an hour-and-a-half-long event too much? That is a matter of judgment and degree."

Said Nadine Strossen, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, quoted in "At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work? After a student protest, Jenny S. Martinez wrote a much-praised memo defending academic freedom. But that protest shows how complicated protecting free speech can be" (NYT).

If you get the balance wrong, Ms. Strossen said, then you risk chilling speech on the other side....

Ms. Strossen said she was struck that [a week later, when she appeared on a panel at Yale], there were no protesters of any kind. “I worry that maybe the reason that there weren’t even nondisruptive protests,” she said, “is students were too afraid that they would be subject to discipline or doxxing.” 

Strossen spoke at Stanford in January, a guest of the Federalist Society. That was 2 months before the famously disrupted visit by Judge Kyle Duncan. Strossen says that Tirien Steinbach, the associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion — widely criticized for her handling of the Duncan event — moderated her event. According to Strossen, "That took some courage." It was "extraordinary."

Pause a moment to absorb that.

"Only now — as a student about to graduate — do I realize how few classmates agree with the loudest ones."

"Most of us fall somewhere between or are still forming our opinions. A friend recently told me that 'coming out as a moderate was more difficult than coming out as gay at Stanford Law School.' He eventually moved to San Francisco so he could 'just ignore the madness.' These dynamics are hardly unique to Stanford. My friends in law school at Yale and Harvard, among others, have shared similar experiences...."

Writes Tess Winston, in "With some of my fellow Stanford Law students, there’s no room for argument" (WaPo).

The quietness of people in the middle makes extremism work. They're so busy being invisible that they don't notice — or acknowledge — the role they play.

How easily they internalize bullying:

Judge Duncan's Wall Street Journal column: "My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School."

Link.

Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week.... 

When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and “trans people.” Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring “You should be ASHAMED,” with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem “collegial.” Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling.  As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: “We hope your daughters get raped!”

It was a big protest, generated by the real human beings the law school had assembled as its student body, not propaganda on the institution's website. It's real life, like the life experienced beyond the courthouse and beyond the law school, and it's not that polite. You know, it's also not polite to put "trans people" in quotation marks. It's a more polished form of incivility, but law students have long protested about the way law dresses up and glosses over injustice.

"[Judge Kyle] Duncan was treated like a politician, because that’s what he is..."

"... and politicians have long understood that, in the United States, shouting at them is our birthright.... The idea that a political speech deserves the quiet deference one brings to a golf course or a tennis match is an idea that runs counter to our American traditions. I’m old enough to remember the last State of the Union address, and I recall Majorie Taylor Greene spending the president’s entire speech braying like a howler monkey looking for a date. I see no reason for Stanford Law students to comport themselves better than Republican members of Congress."

 
Writes Elie Mystal in "Protesting an Anti-Trans Trump Judge Isn’t Disrespectful, It’s American/Judge Kyle Duncan lashed out at students who protested his appearance at Stanford Law School, but shouting at political figures is our most protected speech right" (The Nation). 

"I think the focus on the [Stanford DEI dean Tirien] Steinbach is a mistake, for reasons I articulated..."

"... in my post 'Firing Diversity Dean Over Judge Shout-Down May Help Stanford Law School Escape Consequences Of Its Toxic DEI Culture.' My point was that Steinbach was just doing what was expected of her as a DEI officer. She is the symptom, not the underlying problem, which is the DEI culture of intolerance.That toxic culture evidenced itself after the shout-down. The Stanford Law School Chapter of the Federalist Society, which invited Judge Duncan to speak, got almost no faculty support (only two reached out privately), even though not just Judge Duncan but also Federalist students were targeted. Through its silence, the faculty sent a strong message that what happened was acceptable (had it been a liberal judge shouted down, you can be sure there would have been a faculty uproar.)"

 
Writes William A. Jacobson in "The Stanford Law School Culture, Not The Diversity Dean, Is The Problem (but I repeat myself)/Something is wrong with the culture at Stanford Law School, and many (most) law schools. Let’s address that issue" (Legal Insurrection). 

It's so much easier to target one person. It's the old rules-for-radicals idea: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." The law school dean, by apologizing for Steinbach, has helped isolate the target, as if the larger DEI Culture is not under attack. How weak is that culture? The students ought to suspect the entire thing is a con. Ironically, Critical Theory teaches us always to suspect that these efforts are a con.

Jacobson says it's a mistake for conservatives to begin with the attack on the isolated target. He recommends skipping that step. Here's how Saul Alinsky explained his "Pick the target" approach in "Rules for Radicals":

"You might read comments somewhere that I was, at some point, given 'permission' to deliver my remarks by the DEI Assistant Dean, Steinbach. Nonsense."

"For a good 20-30 minutes (I’m estimating), I was ruthlessly mocked and shouted down by a mob after every third word. And then Steinbach launched into her bizarre prepared speech where she simultaneously 'welcomed' me to campus and told me how horrible and hurtful I was to the community. Then she said I should be free to deliver my remarks. Try delivering a lecture under those circumstances. Basically, they wanted me to make a hostage video. No thanks. The whole thing was a staged public shaming, and after I realized that I refused to play along."

Said Judge Kyle Duncan, interviewed by Rod Dreher (at Substack).

So, the judge declined to deliver his speech after Steinbach quieted the crowd for him. He's also now calling for her to be fired. He says it was a "staged public shaming," but that's the same thing as saying that the protest was planned. He and his supporters are engaging in staged public shaming too, and they want a person not just disrupted on one evening but deprived of her job. That's tit for tat and a refusal to stand down.

Did the Stanford president and the Stanford law school dean apologize for what the DEI dean said to calm the students who were shouting down Judge Kyle Duncan?

That's what Ed Whelan asserts over at National Review. He says:

In an obvious reference to DEI dean Tirien Steinbach’s bizarre six-minute scolding of [Judge Kyle] Duncan, their letter observes that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

As you know, I defended Tirien Steinbach.