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A high-profile law professor who endured cancel culture firsthand lays bare the crisis in American law schools, and sounds the alarm over the threat of radicalization affecting future lawyers, politicians, and judges. When Ilya Shapiro was hired at Georgetown University''s Center for the Constitution, it was an exciting new step in his career. Then he posted a controversial tweet that led to a media circus, heckling crowds of activist students, and a four-month investigation which eventually concluded that because he wasn''t an employee when he tweeted, he wasn''t subject to university policies--but that if he said something that offended anyone in future, he''d create a "hostile educational environment" and be subject to the inquisition again. Recognizing that he couldn''t work under those conditions, Shapiro resigned and sounded the alarm. He saw the precarious status of free thought at law schools and what it meant for the future of our democracy. What happened wasn''t exclusive to him or to Georgetown; this form of illiberalism is a problem across higher education. More dangerously, it''s precipitating a national crisis: a corruption that goes to the heart of the American legal system. In Lawless, Shapiro shows how the warping of higher ed is leading to a country transformed by radicalization. In this rigorously researched jeremiad against censorship, Shapiro demonstrates how the problem is bigger than emotional college kids, and more than just extreme overrepresentation of liberal professors--only three percent of the faculty at Harvard identifies as conservative. The new radicalism is rooted in an activist bureaucracy shaping future generations of American elites into extremists. These are America''s future judges, prosecutors, politicians, and presidents, and Shapiro contends they''ve stopped
About the author
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and was a vice president of the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. His books include Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court, and he has contributed to a variety of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, USA Today, and National Review.
Summary
In the past, Columbia Law School produced leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now it produces window-smashing activists.
When protestors at Columbia broke into a building and created illegal encampments, the student-led Columbia Law Review demanded that finals be canceled because of “distress.”
Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect opponents. Now those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. Rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will soon:
- Be America’s judges, DAs, and prosecutors
- File and fight constitutional lawsuits
- Advise Fortune 500 companies
- Hire other left-wing diversity candidates to staff law firms and government offices
- Run for higher office with an agenda of only enforcing laws that suit left-wing whims
In
Lawless, Ilya Shapiro explains how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institutional weakness. Shapiro met the mob firsthand when he posted a controversial tweet that led to calls for his firing from Georgetown Law. A four-month investigation eventually cleared him on a technicality but declared that if he offended anyone in the future, he’d create a “hostile educational environment” and be subject to the inquisition again. Unable to do the job he was hired for, he resigned.
This cannot continue. In
Lawless, Shapiro reveals how the illiberal takeover of legal education is transforming our country. Unless we stop it now, the consequences will be with us for decades.
