Study: Law Professors Lean Liberal

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A study by the University of California, Berkeley School of Law found law schools hire more “openly liberal professors” than conservative ones, the National Law Journal reported Wednesday.

Researchers found of 149 tenure-track hires made over the last six years, 52 could be identified as liberal and eight could be considered conservative by the study’s measures. The results, the study concludes “doesn’t speak well of intellectual diversity in American law school hiring.

According to NLJ, the study based a professor’s ideology on political donations, Facebook profiles, work experience, and if having clerked for a federal judge, the political party of the president who appointed the judge.

  

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Research for the study, dubbed “Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring,” was conducted by Ph.D candidate Douglas Spencer of Cal Law and law student James Phillips.

The pair wrote “the extreme discrepancy between the proportion of new professors who can be clearly identified as liberal or conservative indicates either unequal hiring patterns or environments less conducive to openness and debate in the law school setting.”

The study notes its possible conservative law professors could be less willing to show their political colors early in their careers.