"This is more than an attack on affirmative action being spear-headed by the Federalist Society lawyers," observes Francis A. Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois. "They want to go beyond getting rid of affirmative action. They want to go back to Brown vs. Board of Education.
"We have Justice Antonin Scalia (who advised the Federalist Society at its inception and later hired two of its three founders as his law clerks), who two years ago gave a public lecture at Columbia Law School where he stated if Brown vs. Board of Education was to be presented to him today, he would rule against the plaintiff. In other words, this was a threat that if Brown vs. Board of Education was voted on before the Supreme Court, he would overturn it."
"People have to understand, whether they like lawyers or not, law schools have an enormous amount of power, whether it's power for good or evil.
Unfortunately, what we are seeing under the Federalist Society is law schools and legal education being used to promote racism, bigotry and Right-wing politics. These people believe in the Bell Curve," says Prof.
Boyle of the University of Illinois, referring to a controversial theory by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein about the supposed low intelligence level of some non-Whites. "You have to understand that. Just as the Federalist Society did to the federal judiciary, they are now trying to do to law schools."
Boyle and others say this is done by establishing well-endowed law professorships and speaking tours for the true believers. "Where they once were scholars with Right-wing foundations like the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, they are now getting credentialed as law professors," he notes.
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francis a. boyle
