The bottom line on Harvard law school's proposed speech code:

"What I do find amazing is that it should be considered at a law school, any law school, because one thing that law schools do is study the constitution and these codes are clearly in violation of the First Amendment," said Harvey Silverglate, a Harvard Law graduate and civil liberties litigator.

Silverglate is also co-founder and co-director of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), an organization that regularly--and successfully--challenges schools when they infringe on the civil liberties of students and faculty. Here he captures the exceptionally disturbing nature of the situation at Harvard. It's one thing when undergraduates demand rules and regulations that violate the First Amendment--such demands are usually motivated by ignorance, and are tempered proportionally by education. But it's another thing entirely when law students at one of the nation's most elite law schools demand unconstitutional policies. It says they neither understand that law nor respect it; it says they are in the business of rationalizing ill-conceived agendas rather than mastering the rationale embodied within the U.S. Constitution; it raises serious questions about the quality of legal education in this country, and it bodes poorly indeed for the future of civil liberties in the U.S.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg notes that law schools have long been in the business of helping the courts make constitutional law regarding race by losing illegitimate cases.