An Addendum on Nino in New Haven
An interesting update to our prior post about Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent appearance at the Yale Law School. From a current YLS student:
Some of us were bothered — though not exactly surprised — by Dean Harold Koh’s tepid introduction of Justice Scalia. Koh couldn’t seem to find anything warm and welcoming to say about Scalia. Rather, he spent his entire introduction praising Christine Jolls.It was as though Scalia wasn’t even there. Koh’s lack of hospitality was particularly striking when compared to how he often gushes about other relatively unremarkable visiting speakers.
Like our correspondent, we’re not entirely surprised. We haven’t met Dean Koh in person, and he wasn’t dean when we were at Yale. But we have heard through the YLS alumni grapevine that he is more ideologically motivated, and less evenhanded, than his predecessor as dean, Tony Kronman.
We’ve also heard Dean Koh compared to Dean Elena Kagan of Harvard Law School in this regard. Dean Kagan is politically active on the liberal side. Like Dean Koh, she served in the Clinton Administration (as a domestic policy advisor and in the White House Counsel’s office). She was nominated to the D.C. Circuit by President Clinton, but was denied a vote, and she’s a possible SCOTUS nominee in a Hillary Clinton Democratic administration. But despite her personal leanings, Dean Kagan has been widely praised for supporting intellectual and ideological diversity on the Harvard Law School campus.
(Also, Dean Kagan was a nominee in our Law School Dean Hotties contest. She did not prevail, losing out to a Yalie (Asha Rangappa). But just like the Oscars, it’s an honor just to be nominated.)
Earlier: The Eyes of the Law: Did Poor Justice Scalia Have to Spend the Night in New Haven?
Law School Dean Hotties: Your Female Nominees
“Harvard Law On A Heterodox Spree, Listing to Right” [Volokh Conspiracy]
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Perhaps Shelia Birnbaum should have stood in for him.
In other words, Dean Koh is simply a political hack. That's certainly his reputation.
If it is his reputation, it's an unfair one. And frankly, I disagree with the description of his introduction--he was effusive about Jolls, sure, in a more personal way, but I thought it was pretty clear that he just had more specific things to say about a colleague he worked hard to recruit than a Supreme Court Justice he doesn't know very personally. It wasn't that he didn't have an enthusiastic introduction and welcome for Scalia; he just didn't say the same types of things about the two of them, which is perfectly appropriate.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this.
But setting up the event so that Koh introduces Jolls, rather than Scalia, seems like an artful way of allowing Koh to remain entirely agnostic about the justice.
Anon YLSer,
I didn't go to YLS, but Koh's reputation is that he takes a very "us" vs. "them" view of the law-- with "us" being liberals and "them" being conservatives. Is that unfair? I'd be interested to hear of his efforts to recuit conservative faculty members, support for conservative students, and the like.
Sure, he takes a generally black and white view of the law. But then again, so do most of the rest of the faculty.
It's one thing for Ackerman to be liberal, Priest to be conservative, and Amar to be, well, Amar. They're "just" law school professors. They have the freedom to speak and write whatever they like.
But a law school dean, the leader of a school and its public face, shouldn't be a political hack. When you become dean, you take on a responsibility to be more balanced, to not alienate sizable parts of the student and alumni body, and to think about how your actions and statements might affect the school of which you are a steward.
Kronman was very fair-minded. Guido was (and is) liberal, but he didn't put his personal political views ahead of the good of the school.
We will see what kind of dean Harold Koh turns out to be.
Koh's a hack for the Democrats, but I don't understand how that sets him apart much from other law school deans. He isn't the first dean to introduce a conservative while looking like that's a part of his duty that he dreads.
But honestly, so what? He has opinions, and he shouldn't try to hide them. When Scalia spoke at my school, I think it added to my esteem for him to know that my dean didn't like him and didn't enjoy introducing him. Law students aren't so impressionable that their deans should shelter them from opinions.
Many law school deans are ideological hacks, but Koh is one of the more extreme ones.
One could name many current and former deans of top law schools who are more balanced than he is. In addition to the ones already mentioned - Kagan, Kronman, Calabresi - you could add Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of Stanford, and David Schizer, current dean of Columbia.
yls08 writes:
"Sure, he takes a generally black and white view of the law. But then again, so do most of the rest of the faculty."
This may be true at Yale, but it is not true at most other law schools. That may be why Koh seems to stand out for those of us who did not go to Yale, but is no more of a hack than most profs to Yalies.