Not Tea Partiers, gun nuts, wingnuts, NASCAR dads and moms, or bitter clingers.
Not loony-lefties, nutroots, socialist revolutionaries, or Kos-sacks.
No, there is a gathering crowd with a thirst for revenge, who will not be satisfied unless and until we get on the Supreme Court…. (wait for it) …. diversity of law schools.
Hell hath no fury like a really driven, smart and self-confident college student who was rejected by Harvard Law School and Yale Law School.
Trust me, I know the feeling. I was wait-listed at Yale Law School, and I HATE HATE HATE Yale (note, all caps and repetition signifies that I really mean it). I have a story about how I really didn’t want to go to Yale anyway, but I’ve told it so many times that even I don’t believe it anymore.
So this gathering crowd of the Great Disappointed is expressing feelings similar to those written by Jonathan Turley (Northwestern Law School ’87):
The favoritism shown Harvard and Yale should be viewed not just as incestuous but as scandalous. It undermines educational institutions across the country by maintaining a clearly arbitrary and capricious basis for selection. It also runs against the grain of a nation based on meritocracy and opportunity.
Incestuous? Scandalous? Arbitrary? Capricious? Hyperbole much?
There are non-lawyers writing such things (Walter Shapiro, James Piereson). There also are Yale Law School grads (Michael Barone ’69 and David Bernstein ’91) who decry the lack of educational diversity on the High Court; that they feel entitled to make such comments despite their credentials just proves everything I always felt about the smug arrogance of Yale Law grads.
But let me suggest that the problem is not law school credentials, but attitude, as witnessed by the four non-Ivy League law professors who do not even count Clinical Law Professors as people (don’t get me started).
Arrogance and class snobbery know no educational boundaries. Fight the attitude, not the degree.
Do not underestimate the power of those who have been nursing their educational wounds for a generation. Their moment may have arrived.
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