SURELY NOT — THAT’S WHERE MY PAYCHECK COMES FROM! Robert Nagel writes that law schools are bad for democracy:
Legal education shapes lawyers’ thinking, and lawyers help to shape American culture — particularly the political culture. Unfortunately, this education breeds and dignifies some dangerous inclinations. It encourages people to favor constructed idealizations over real life. And it confuses the skills of argumentation with morality. The legions of lawyers encamped across the country to litigate their way to political victory are the embodiment of a more insidious process — the penetration of our society by a relentlessly adversarial mindset, one that is entirely ready to make our democracy unworkable.
I hope that the election won’t be close enough for that to matter. But his larger point, alas, seems sound.