Corporate & Securities Law

Scalia on Chicago Law

By Stephen Bainbridge

Dan Slater reports:

What with the summer SCOTUS break we???ve been having a bit of Justice Scalia withdrawal around here. But recently he???s been back on tour, stopping yesterday at his teaching alma mater, University of Chicago Law School, where he served up a withering critique of what he sees as the school???s new liberal bent.

According to this piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, Scalia told 500 members of the Federalist Society that, back in the days when he used to teach at Chicago ??? from 1977 to 1982 ??? the courses had more rigor and the school had a more conservative ethos.

???I regret it,??? Scalia said. ???I don???t think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school.???

It’s certainly true that, from the outside, Chicago now looks like your run of the mill left-liberal law faculty. But was Chicago ever really a conservative bastion or was it just that the political connotations ascribed to law and economics created a false impression back when Chicago actually had high profile law and economics folks? One thing that seems certain, however, is that the place has lost its law and economics distinctiveness.

Full post as published by BusinessAssociationsBlog.com on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).