John Bradley recently made a posting concerned by the way political rhetoric has colored a recent communication from his alma mater. This morning I read an interesting article in US News about just how left-leaning academic faculties are across the nation US News article.

I don't propose that law schools crank out nothing but conservative-minded prosecutors and corporate types, but it seems that diversity on campus now includes everything but thought. When I was looking at law schools to attend, I checked websites to see if the schools had former prosecutors on the faculty. . . very few.

I'd like to know if anyone had a law school experience that they would characterize as balanced. Has it changed in the past few decades? I'd also like to hear the most ridiculous thing you've heard a law professor say. So far, mine is a professor who suggested that prosecutors should have accomplice criminal liability for sexual assault when they send an offender to prison who is small and weak (and forseeably unable to defend himself from sexual assault).

I felt like I got a pretty balanced package at Tech a few years back. While two of the four members of the Lubbock ACLU were on the faculty, we had a lot of "real life" type professors too. Granted, the criminal law types were mostly on the defense side, but none of them were morons like the one you describe. I think they were more the types that think, "yeah, this is a bad guy, but its my job to defend him." My criminal law professor discussed the three basic underpinings of criminal law--rehabilitation, deterrence, and punishment--but freely acknowledged that, after his many decades defending criminals, punishment was the only one of the three that mattered. Even the liberal professors didn't grandstand about their beliefs--they taught us how to practice law and be good lawyers. Some of the profs were conservative. The new dean out there was career army JAG, so it will be interesting to see how that works out.

It doesn't get more conservative than there where law and economics rule the day. However, the professors running the law school clinic tended to be on the liberal side and the criminal law profs I would describe as moderate. I think the cross discipline approach with the injection of real world economics helped add balance to the Chicago faculty. Everyone there across the political spectrum referred to the Coase theorem.

Please visit Baylor School of Law. You will find small classes, accessible professors and a balanced approach to all areas of the law.