Legal Commentary

You may remember I tried to blog about professors who select their casebooks in part because, for ideological reasons, they don't want to subsidize particular professors -- not because of the casebook's ideology, but because of the professor him- or herself -- but got, um, sidetracked. 

In any event, I'm very grateful to Joe Hodnicki of the Law Librarian Blog, a part of the Paul Caron hegemony, for taking up this question.  He has put up a poll asking, "Should one take into account the ideology of the authors and editors when choosing course books, bearing in mind that you're sending revenue their way?"  The results, surprisingly to me, are running 50/50 -- and that's after I cast my "no" vote (largely so I could see the results, although that is my position).  Of course the poll is not scientific, and I don't know what the raw numbers are.  It's also not clear whether the respondents are clear on the notion that we're talking only about the ideology of the person, not the materials.  But I would have thought that most people would have said no.  Perhaps this lends some credence to Prof. Bernstein's original comment, which provided some evidence that the phenomenon existed more than I thought it did.