New Study Shows White Christians and Republicans Underrepresented in Law School Faculties

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Summary: A new study coming out of Northwestern University School of Law shows law school demographics disfavor white Christians and Republicans.

“After four decades of hiring to make law professors more representative of American society, law faculties are probably less representative ideologically than they have been for at least several decades.” This the conclusion of Professor James Lindgren, speaking of his research at Northwestern University School of Law. Despite metrics and incentives to “diversify” law school faculties, white Christians and Republicans are underrepresented.

  

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Part of the problem is that most of the women and minorities that have joined the staff vote Democratic. Viewpoint diversity has not improved. 59 percent of lawyers in 2013 identified as white Christians, and this corresponds to 57 percent of the working population, but only 34 percent of law professors identified themselves as such. Though 23 percent of lawyers are Republican men, only 10 percent of law professors are so.

Other anomalies in law school employment include Republican women. “On law faculties there are about 10 times as many Jewish women as Republican women, though in the full-time working population there are 24 times as many Republican women as Jewish women.”

These figures were pulled from the American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools and a survey of law professors’ ideology and religion, as well as large-scale government surveys.

This situation has led openly conservative part-time legal writing instructor Teresa Wagner to sue the University of Iowa on the grounds that they didn’t choose her for a full-time position based on her political stance.

News Source: National Law Journal