10 questions with ‘Schools for Misrule’ author Walter Olson

4. What do you mean in the subtitle of your book that America is “overlawyered?” Do you believe that we have too many lawyers in America and, if so, why do you see that as so harmful?

It’s really a terrible idea to turn as many important decisions as we do over to lawyers and lawsuits. Those with a taste or pocketbook for grueling litigation impose their will on the rest of us. Organizations run by their legal departments tend to be bureaucratic, rule-bound and risk-averse. We pay out of pocket, of course, but the non-monetary costs are really the more pertinent here.

5. Is the idea of sovereignty being devalued in our nation’s top law schools? If so, what could that mean for the country?

Just about the hottest trend in the law schools these days is the rapid ascent of international human rights as the subject of study and activism. At a certain level of abstraction we can all agree on this — who doesn’t favor freeing jailed dissidents? But in practice what is being argued is that longstanding subjects of domestic policy debate — from the death penalty to labor law to affirmative action — can’t be decided by purely domestic lights after all, but must be submitted to the norms of the “international community.” More often than not, this hypothesized international community turns out to hold views that are a slightly globalized variant of the voice of New York Times editorials.

6. Are there any law schools that are particularly noxious in your opinion? Are there any that are particularly praiseworthy?

Highly ranked law schools tend to be rigidly standardized in ideological as in other ways. Virtually all have a few, perhaps two or three, outspokenly conservative or libertarian profs. (So don’t go saying they aren’t diverse.) The big exception is the Virginia state school George Mason in the D.C. suburbs, which has made a conscious decision to break from the pack by scooping up talented right-of-center scholars, a departure from the norm so eccentric as to be almost Martian.

7. What should law schools teach?

Most students and most future employers agree: whatever else law schools do, they should get across the “black-letter” law needed to pass the bar and make a go of early practice. But competition for prestige — which law schools, for all their egalitarian pretensions, are totally caught up in — pushes in quite a different direction. Ranking systems reward schools (as Malcolm Gladwell noted the other day) for being more “Yale-like,” although Yale Law School is famous for omitting the basics as beneath its notice. This tension goes back a long way and I trace it in the book.

8. Now that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been repealed, do you think law schools that don’t facilitate military recruiting on campus will change their policy? Or will they find another excuse to continue to make it difficult for the military to recruit students?

What drove the recruiting controversy was the sacrosanct nature of anti-discrimination as an idea, certainly not any sort of deep pacifist sentiment. So I expect most schools will heed President Obama’s call to let the military back in. Dennis Jacobs, chief judge of the federal Second Circuit, gave a great speech at the Federalist Society recently (catch it on YouTube) on why so many in elite law lack a feel for why the armed services are distinctive or important.

NEXT: Olson on what books has shaped his worldview -- and what books aspiring lawyers should read