Sarah Parshall Perry writes for National Review Online about one legal group’s malign influence over the profession.
The American Bar Association’s monopoly over the accreditation of U.S. law schools has long been defended as essential to maintaining excellence in the legal profession. As the sole federally recognized accreditor whose approval is required for bar eligibility in nearly every state in the country, the ABA exercises monolithic influence over legal education and, by extension, the judiciary and the bar. But this authority rests on an implicit premise of institutional neutrality, a premise that no longer holds — if it ever did at all.
n our work to secure a high-quality, value-neutral education for every American student from preschool through graduate school, Defending Education has recently released a report identifying the myriad ways that the American Bar Association is unfit to continue in its role of overseeing American legal education.
What are they, you ask? Let us count them.
For starters, the ABA doesn’t represent a majority — or even a plurality — of American lawyers. In fact, its membership represents a paltry 11–12 percent of actively practicing lawyers. …
… America First Legal recently noted that over the past decade, at least 80 percent of the ABA’s Supreme Court amicus briefs advanced progressive outcomes, with none supporting conservative legal positions. The ABA has, for example, consistently argued for the losing perspective on abortion, gender identity, gun control, and affirmative action. It has even gone so far as to argue that the Equal Rights Amendment was ratified — a position so untenable that even the Deparrment of Justice and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg laughed it off.
That doesn’t just make the American Bar Association a progressive advocacy organization masquerading as a neutral membership organization; it makes them bad lawyers.
The ABA’s ratings of federal judicial nominees have also long exhibited demonstrable inconsistency when applied to conservative candidates. Empirical studies spanning multiple administrations, including analyses published in Political Research Quarterly, document a pattern: Republican nominees receive lower ratings than Democratic nominees with comparable credentials.
