You’ve decided to go to law school. You have probably acted against the advice of family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, teachers, clergy, and, above all, lawyers. But as my late mother said to me often: some people have to learn things the hard way. I will not dwell on the decision to go to law school. But if you are reading Ius & Iustitium, you either are doing oppo research for your Conservatism Inc. job or you have an interest in the classical legal tradition. As many students are beginning law school this month, I thought I would offer some reflections for your edification.
First, grades matter most. Some of the ways they matter, like employment, you already understand. You need good grades for clerkships and jobs. But that is not the only way. For example, you will not have time to explore the classical legal tradition if you’re playing catch up from being the anchor man (or woman) in Property your second semester. And you will not have the same opportunity to research and write on questions that interest you—perhaps even questions related to the common good or the tradition—if you are not on a journal. Enough said about that.
Second, you will have to find your own opportunities to learn about the classical tradition. It is unlikely that you will be greeted with smiles and solicitude if you walk into law school and proudly inform someone—anyone—that you want to learn everything there is about the common good and the classical legal tradition. The reception will be even frostier if you say how inspired you are by Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism or Pat Smith’s epoch-making Ius & Iustitium posts. Even at supposedly conservative schools, there are precious few friends and plenty of people who will try to steer you away from the common good and the tradition. (More on that in a moment.)
It is, of course, not impossible for you to find opportunities to learn about the tradition. Does the school offer a class on Roman law? If there is not a class in the law school, is there a co-listed class with another department? What other classes on legal history are available? For the most part, your 1L curriculum will be regimented. However, this means that you will have a year (in what little free time you do have) to do some research and find courses that will enable you to study the classical tradition in greater detail. And there are other options for independent research that may be available to you. Traditionally, this has been in the context of law journals.
Third (and perhaps crucially), you are under no obligation to tell your professors and fellow students what you are thinking at all times. You are under no obligation, for example, to tweet, and, indeed, you probably should not tweet, least of all about the common good, Adrian Vermeule, Ius & Iustitium, Pat Smith, or the classical legal tradition. As I said, there are plenty of law professors, even at supposedly conservative schools, who are openly and deeply hostile to the project of Ius & Iustitium. It is, of course, entirely possible that these opponents of the classical legal tradition are able to set aside their deeply held objections, some very sharp, to help students who hold such views. It would be extremely magnanimous of them to do so. Yet this is one question that can be answered only in retrospect—if ever. Why be the first to find out?
Likewise, unless things have changed very much since I was in law school, law students are hugely competitive. There are a finite number of As, a finite number of journal positions, a finite number of clerkships, and a finite number of jobs. This much finitude would be enough to send people much less tightly wound than the average law student into fight-or-flight mode. I would not assume that all your fellow students will be favorably disposed toward you. Given the work of Aaron Sibarium at the Washington Free Beacon, revealing the extreme leftist ideology at some top law schools, it is pretty clear that some students will be very unfavorably disposed toward you. Neither would I assume that even conservative students are above whisper campaigns and some light detraction. It would be foolish to think that such behavior is known only among leftists and that right-liberals are above all that.
What I propose is a kind of inner emigration. It is true that there is momentum building behind a politics of the common good and a jurisprudence of the common good. But it is equally true that the forces of liberalism remain entirely opposed to the common good, except to the extent that they can claim that it is actually served by the same old liberalism they have always been committed to. You may think that, among conservatives, you have found friends and sympathetic interlocutors. However, one need not look very far to see that, even among conservatives, there is staunch, well-funded resistance to a jurisprudence of the common good. The safest move under such conditions is to explore the common good and the classical legal tradition in an interior way.
But it is only an inner emigration. And it should not stop you from exploring questions related to a jurisprudence of the common good. There are interesting questions relating to antitrust, communications law, and executive power (to mention only three, predominately federal, topics and to say nothing of the plethora of state-law topics) that are intimately related to the common good and the classical legal tradition. A journal note or comment can explore these questions without flaunting deeper commitments for hostile scrutiny.
Furthermore, feel free to join various student organizations, even student organizations coded as “conservative.” If you want to be competitive for certain jobs, especially clerkships with some judges and government jobs under Republican administrations, you will need to join at least one of these organizations. Make friends, network with judges and lawyers, learn about opportunities. But remember: you are under no obligation to tell everyone what you think. These topics may come up, to be sure, but resist the temptation to be more than a noncommittal, if interested, observer.
One of the most important concepts of recent years has been Adrian Vermeule’s “integration from within.” Yet in order to become an important figure in the regime capable of turning it toward right order, one must first obtain the credentials necessary to become an important figure in the regime. Maybe liberal credentialism is going the way of liberalism itself. For example, some talent spotters for a proposed Second Trump Administration have talked about hiring young men and women who are first and foremost ideologically sound. But this seems to mean for the most part thinking that the agenda of Conservatism Inc. is quote-unquote based. And, more to the point, the odds are vanishingly slim that such an approach will ever mean that top graduates of top law schools will have a hard time finding a job.
Law school is only three years. There will be plenty of time to debate and discuss these questions, ideally after you have gotten great grades, written on a journal, clerked for a judge, and found a job. There is no reason, really, to jeopardize your chances of clerking for a judge and finding a job, especially if you expect to do so in supposedly conservative circles, to show off in class or to win some arguments at a networking event. What I propose, therefore, is simply focusing on obtaining necessary credentials in such a way that will avoid drawing the attention of gatekeepers.
Free advice is worth what you pay for it and some people really do have to learn things the hard way. But take my advice: keep your head down and your nose to the grindstone.
Pat Smith
