Yet More Thoughts (and a bit of love) for the Fancy Lawyers
A few days ago I found myself in a brief online argument (on social media) with a reformist member of the Court of Justice, insisting that, contrary to my claims, it is completely false to say that there are no reformers in the academy. Of course, I never said there were No reformers of the academy. What I have said, and what I think is undeniable, is that the legal academy as a group or community, and particularly its most powerful voices, has been deeply entrenched in the camp of SCOTUS worshipers. And for clarity, we’re actually talking about the mainstream, liberal academic legal community here. Needless to say, this applies, on a contingent basis certainly, to the conservative legal movement which not only participates in the corruption of the Roberts Court but is in fact its deep structure, from which the Roberts Court is but the degenerate, swaggering oak towering over the canopy and blocking out the sun that civic democracy needs to flourish.
Anyway, I have received many of your emails from the legal academy and continue to receive them. This is not surprising. Historically, the largest professions in the TPM Reader community are higher education and lawyers. (We don’t need to break every stereotype.) So the legal academy is something of an obvious ground zero for TPM readers and I suppose that makes my smear campaign somewhat paradoxical. In any case, as I pointed out a few days ago, each profession has claims beyond its true area of expertise. The professionalization movement of the end of the 19th century profoundly affected the historical profession. In fact, that’s the only reason it’s even considered a profession. But historians cannot take away your right to abortion or turn your constitutional order into an autocracy. At worst, they can rob the past of its mystery and fascination and reduce it to a few obsolete or valuable debates, obscured by obscure and ornate jargon. So it’s really not a comparison.
More seriously, I would really like to hear from you because I am very interested in what is currently happening within the law school. For all my photos, the legal academy has a key role in all of this. Top legal academics, especially those at the heights of the profession and outside networks, adopting the mantle of reform would and will be enormous. I feel, from a distance, that we are in the middle or beginning of a sea change on this front for the simple reason that 2025 and early 2026 have simply left no space available to defend the legitimacy of this Court. In some ways, it’s the lesser silver lining of having the Biden presidency sandwiched between two Trump presidencies. This is simply to deny that the Court’s corrupt majority is anything but a group of Republican officials attempting to govern across the country and consolidate Republican power under the guise of constitutional interpretation – the analogies between the cases are too close, the time between them is too short.
Anyway, you righteous among legal academics, let me know what’s going on.
