Gerken on Campus Free Speech

Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken recently published this essay on campus free speech, in which she explains why law schools have not seen the sort of disruptive demonstrations that have troubled campuses from Middlebury to Berkeley.  She attributes the relative forbearance of law students -- who are willing to tolerate the presence of controversial speakers without interrupting them -- to the nature of legal education.  Here are a few excerpts:

Charles Murray, the controversial scholar whose speech drew violent reaction at Middlebury, has spoken at Yale Law School twice during the past few years. Students and faculty engaged with him, and students held a separate event to protest and discuss the implications of his work. But he spoke without interruption. That's exactly how a university is supposed to work.

There may be a reason why law students haven't resorted to the extreme tactics we've seen on college campuses: their training.

In law schools we don't just teach our students to know the weaknesses in their own arguments. We demand that they imaginatively and sympathetically reconstruct the best argument on the other side.

The rituals of respect shown inside and outside the courtroom come from this training. Those rituals are so powerful that they can trump even the deepest divides.

I agree with Dean Gerken about the virtues of legal education, which emphasizes the importance of listening and responding to disagreeable arguments, but I think she is over claiming a bit. Law students are self-selected.  Most of them come to law school because they are already inclined to listen to multiple sides of an argument or to accept the need for formal give and take.  We teach them how the process works, and how to be effective, but most of them do not need us to convince them of the importance of hearing out the other side (or at least not interrupting).

There are also demographic factors.  The median law student is probably five to seven years older than the median undergrad. They are also much busier, with more demanding classes and often part-time jobs.  And most important, law students are intensely career focused, and therefore risk averse.  Students in other professional schools share these characteristics, and I am not aware of disruptive demonstrations at medical, business, pharmacy, journalism, theology, engineering, or veterinary schools.

Still, the campus disrupters would do well to listen to Dean Gerken's admonition:  "Lawyers learn to see the world as their opponents do, and nothing is more humbling than that."

Comments

[Deep State Special Legal Counsel]

"Most come to law school because they are already inclined to listen to multiple sides...." Really? So, what happened to Jeff Sessions, John Ascroft, Alberto Gonzalez and the multitudes of carnival barkers on afternoon tv soliciting for injury cases? So, all those Hammers, Heavy Hitters, Super Leading Lawyers went to law school to relish a good argument like Plato? Ok.

[Lawprof]

Gerken is committing a hasty generalization fallacy in generalizing from a small, self-selected sample of Yale Law Students.

[Derek Tokaz]

Not sure this is so much praise for law school as it is condemnation of undergraduate institutions. Being able to understand and articulate the arguments of the other side ought to be taught at the freshman level. Is law school really becoming Remedial College Writing?