Lawless bookcover

Lawless

The Miseducation of America's Elites
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

In the past, Columbia Law School produced leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now it produces window-smashing activists.

When protestors at Columbia broke into a build­ing and created illegal encampments, the student-led Columbia Law Review demanded that finals be canceled because of “distress.”

Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect oppo­nents. Now those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. Rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will soon:

  • Be America’s judges, DAs, and prosecutors
  • File and fight constitutional lawsuits
  • Advise Fortune 500 companies
  • Hire other left-wing diversity candidates to staff law firms and government offices
  • Run for higher office with an agenda of only enforcing laws that suit left-wing whims

In Lawless, Ilya Shapiro explains how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institu­tional weakness. Shapiro met the mob firsthand when he posted a controversial tweet that led to calls for his firing from Georgetown Law. A four-month investi­gation eventually cleared him on a technicality but declared that if he offended anyone in the future, he’d create a “hostile educational environment” and be sub­ject to the inquisition again. Unable to do the job he was hired for, he resigned.

This cannot continue. In Lawless, Shapiro reveals how the illib­eral takeover of legal education is transforming our country. Unless we stop it now, the consequences will be with us for decades.

Product Details

PublisherBroadside Books
Publish DateJanuary 14, 2025
Pages272
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9780063336582
Dimensions9.0 X 6.0 X 1.0 inches | 13.8 pounds

About the Author

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and was a vice president of the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. His books include Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court, and he has contributed to a variety of publications, including the Wall Street JournalHarvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, USA Today, and National Review.

Reviews

Ilya Shapiro takes the academy to court—and wins. In this thoughtful new book, he makes the case that legal education has been captured and corrupted by left-wing ideologues. He knows it from observation, but also from experience. He pulls no punches and tells it like it is.
Christopher F. Rufo

When did breaking windows become an acceptable activity for lawyers-in-training? Lawless is the shocking story of how our most prestigious law schools were overtaken by student mobs, enabled by faculty and bureaucrats who care more about diversity quotas and “safety” than truth-seeking and the robust exchange of ideas. A sobering must-read. — William P. Barr

It should be axiomatic that the law is followed at law schools. But like much of what transpires on American campuses these days, it has become business as anything but usual. In Lawless, the brilliant Ilya Shapiro catalogues the ideological capture of America’s law schools, where woke administrators and bureaucrats are focused on imposing their worldview and preferred social order, not on nurturing young minds to debate ideas freely and – yes – wrestle with opinions with which they don’t agree. If debating ideas is too tough a task for aspiring lawyers, they certainly aren’t ready for the courtroom, the boardroom, or anywhere else lawyers are required.

Betsy DeVos

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.sign up to affiliate program link
Become an affiliate