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FIRST ON FOX: A report released this week examining America’s election-law pipeline found law schools that are overwhelmingly left-leaning, leaving conservatives outnumbered in both law-school classrooms and election litigation, which has resulted in a real world effect on courtroom outcomes, the report says.
After reviewing election-law courses and faculty at all 198 ABA-accredited law schools, The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, found that liberal professors outnumber conservative professors nearly 7-to-1.
“Among those few law schools that make election law classes available, leftist and liberal election professors outnumber right of center and conservative ones 76 to 12,” the report states, adding that most of the election law centers are based in universities in blue states like New York and California.
“There are so many left-wing lawyers in election law that it creates policy outcomes, election law changes, adapts, and election integrity statutes get struck down because there’s so many lawyers on the other side,” PILF President J. Christian Adams told Fox News Digital.
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A gavel sits on a judge’s bench as people leave court. (iStock)
“So nobody ever studied what’s going on in law schools. We just always assumed, oh, there’s just so many of them, but we never asked why. So, for the first time ever, Public Interest Legal Foundation went in and quantified the election law professors in the country and figured out if they’re liberal or conservative and it’s overwhelming. An absolute dangerous imbalance.”
PILF also examined curriculum at the top schools and characterized 70% of election-law classes as taught by professors with a left-leaning ideological bias.
The report argues that students are being trained to challenge voter ID laws, citizenship-verification requirements, redistricting maps, voter-roll maintenance and other election-integrity measures. As a result, the law school graduates then move into liberal nonprofits and major law firms that litigate those issues.
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The report cites examples from course descriptions that include references to “voter suppression,” racial and partisan gerrymandering, felony disenfranchisement, the Electoral College and “election subversion.”
The report also highlights what it describes as ideological course offerings at several law schools, including Harvard’s “Bonobo Sisterhood” class, which examines what bonobos can teach humans about creating a society free of male sexual coercion. PILF points to election-law courses at Harvard, Michigan, UC Berkeley and other schools that address social justice, racial inequity, voter suppression, election subversion and proposals to restructure the Electoral College.
The report makes the case that the political imbalance in law schools makes its way into courtrooms across the nation. Adams, who litigated a redistricting case in Galveston County, told Fox News Digital that the left brings “a swarm of lawyers” to court, outnumbering conservatives “five, six, seven times” in some hearings.
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Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA – November 22, 2024: Autumn in Harvard Yard, the oldest part of the Harvard University campus, its historic center and modern crossroads. Massachusetts Hall on the left and Johnston Gate in the center. First Parish in Cambridge church is in the background. (A.P. Cortizas Jr./Getty Images)
“In that trial, it was so many lawyers on the other side, not only at the regular lawyer table, they filled the jury box,” Adams said. “It was like 25 to five.” Adams added that “anytime voter ID hangs in the balance, the left sends an army,” while “conservatives defending election integrity just don’t have the horses.”
Adams told Fox News Digital that the current political culture on campuses exacerbates the divide and that part of the solution is law schools in red states establishing election law centers.
“There’s definitely a culture on campuses that makes it hard,” Adams said. “I’ve spoken at 75 law schools, and at many of them, conservatives show up as an anomaly rather than as active participants. But that’s not true everywhere.”
“A lot of schools that aren’t ideologically driven still don’t have election law programs. There’s no reason almost none of the law schools in Texas should teach election law. That’s something the legislature could fix by funding an election law chair at one of the state’s public universities.”
The report does not argue that every professor it identified as left-leaning advocates for a particular legal outcome or that ideology alone determines the result of election cases. Rather, PILF makes the case that the imbalance shapes the pipeline of students and lawyers entering election litigation, leaving conservative attorneys with fewer specialized colleagues, fewer academic resources and less experience to draw on when defending election-integrity laws.
The result, according to PILF, is a self-enforcing imbalance where left-leaning professors shape how students are introduced to election law, those students move into voting-rights nonprofits and major law firms, and they eventually become the attorneys challenging election-integrity laws in court.
According to report, that translates into more than just an ideological disparity on campus but a nationwide advantage in the lawyers, research and resources available to each side of election litigation.
“We can solve this problem of this dangerous imbalance in election litigation, but we have to start to solve it,” Adams told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital reached out to Harvard, UC Berkeley, and University of Michigan law schools for comment.