ILYA SOMIN HAS THOUGHTS on that University of Iowa Law School discrimination lawsuit. I wonder how this relates to party-affiliation patronage cases like Rutan, Branti, and Elrod, though. The question is whether hiring people based on ideology is analogous to patronage hiring. Not exactly the same, maybe, but . . . . I’m not aware of a case on precisely on point, but anybody who thinks there’s no patronage in the academic world is out of touch.