Someone should write a book about legal education in the U.S. PC on campus is one thing. But PC legal education is something else again. What's scary about the stories coming out about law school insanity--I am thinking not just of the recent outrages at Washington University at St. Louis, but also of the brewing storm of stupidity at NYU as reported by Stanley Kurtz--is that the people involved have such close ties to how existing law is interpreted and to what new laws will be made. Watching the law students at WUSTL utterly fail to comprehend such basic legal concepts as the First Amendment and viewpoint discrimination was chilling. Watching the law faculty at NYU refuse to debate University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein on the issue of military recruitment on campus--even as they sign petitions opposing it--is even more chilling. When students are painfully clueless, we look to their teachers (and I do hope that WUSTL is looking hard at a law school faculty that is not teaching its students about the First Amendment). But when faculty are clueless (i.e., incompetent), where are we to turn? They are the teachers, the mentors, the guides, the examples, and in a very real way, the gatekeepers. And at NYU they are saying as loudly as they can that some issues are not up for debate, that some positions do not need to be defended or discussed, that the exchange of ideas does not matter as much as having an inflexible opinion, that they cannot be bothered to explain themselves, and that opposing views are beneath their notice. I would say that such intolerance is itself beneath notice--except that the people who are practising it are also those who are responsible for training the next generation of lawyers, judges, and, yes, law professors.

UPDATE: My mom writes in to say Epstein should take a page out of Alan Dershowitz's book and debate an empty chair. I second that motion.

UPDATED UPDATE: Lane McFadden, an NYU law alum, has more.