From Law Blog - WSJ.com: The O.C.:
According to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports, a blog on comings-and-goings in legal academia, UC Irvine, which recently got approval to start a law school, reached an agreement with Duke’s Erwin Chemerinsky (pictured), a prominent constitutional law scholar, to have Chemerinsky be its inaugural dean — and then rescinded the offer yesterday because of his [liberal] political views....I must here admit to a bit of schadenfreude, given that academia is ruled mainly by Leftists who are in the habit of not hiring and not promoting conservatives.
“I’ve been a liberal law professor for 28 years,” Chemerinsky said. “I write lots of op-eds and articles, I argue high-profile cases, and I expected there would be some concern about me. My hope was that I’d address it by making the law school open to all viewpoints.”...He added: “Obviously I’m sad because it’s something I was exciting about. I’m angry because I don’t believe anyone liberal or conservative should be denied a position like this because of political views.”
But, but, but...many (even some conservatives) will say "two wrongs don't make a right." Actually, thousands of wrongs have been committed against conservative academics, but the un-hiring of Chemerinsky isn't a wrong. I have encountered his view of the Constitution, and have found it highly unconstitutional. He shouldn't have been hired for the deanship in the first place. The man has no place teaching constitutional law, anywhere. It has been his good luck (and our misfortune) that many law schools (like most of academia) are dominated by the Left.
UPDATE (09/17/07): Conservatives just play too nice. UC Irvine has been suckered into hiring Chereminsky as law dean, after all.
See the new law school open next year. Hear the new dean promise "to respect all points of view." Wait for the new law school to begin veering to the Left. Peer into the not-so-distant future as the school drives out the few conservative-libertarian profs it was willing and able to recruit.
You can what's going to happen because Brian Leiter, a Marxist who parades as a law prof, is happy about the news of Chereminsky's hiring. (For more about Leiter, see this, this, this, and this.)
UPDATE (09/18/07): Chereminsky, I now learn, has been representing Rachel Corrie's family in its suit against Caterpillar, Inc. Corrie, as you will remember, was the pro-Palestinian protester who failed to get out of the way of an Israeli-wielded Cat. So, Corrie's family sued the company. “This is a case about direct commercial sales,” Chemerinsky said. “It’s about holding corporations liable when they aid and abet violations of human rights.”
Corrie's family has a right to representation, but Chemerinsky wasn't obliged to represent the family. In choosing to do so, he revealed his anti-U.S., anti-Israeli bias.
Fortunately, in this case, the Ninth Circuit (surprisingly) did the right thing: It affirmed the dismissal of the family's suit by a district court judge. A telling passage from the court's ruling:
It is not the role of the courts to indirectly indict Israel for violating international law with military equipment the United States government provided and continues to provide. . . . Plaintiffs may purport to look no further than Caterpillar itself, but resolving their suit will necessarily require us to look beyond the lone defendant in this case and toward the foreign policy interests and judgments of the United States government itself.Which is precisely what the Corrie family, their supporters, and Chemerinsky sought: judicial intervention in what are essentially political questions. Isn't that the Left's preferred way? You bet it is. And that's part of the mindset Chemerinsky will bring to the deanship of the new law school.
UPDATE (09/19/07): See this related post by Gail Heriot of The Right Coast.
