Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites

By Ilya Shapiro

“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

“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.”

   — Betsy DeVos

“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

What happens when America’s top law schools stop believing in legal education?

When Ilya Shapiro was hired at Georgetown University’s Center for the Constitution, it was an exciting new step in his career. Then, he posted a controversial tweet that led to a media circus, heckling crowds of activist students, and a four-month investigation which eventually cleared him—with the caveat that if he said something that offended anyone in future, he’d create a “hostile educational environment” and be subject to the inquisition again.

Recognizing these untenable conditions, Shapiro resigned and sounded the alarm. He saw the precarious status of free thought at law schools and what it meant for the future of our democracy. What happened wasn’t exclusive to him or to Georgetown; this form of illiberalism is a problem across higher education. More dangerously, it’s precipitating a national crisis: a corruption that goes to the heart of the American legal system.

In LAWLESS: The Misedcation of America’s Elites (Broadside Books; on sale January 14, 2025), Ilya Shapiro shows how the warping of higher ed is leading to a country transformed by radicalization. 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.

Recently, 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.” At Stanford, chanting activists, egged on by an associate dean, drove away a federal judge. Yale’s hostility to free speech led more than a dozen federal judges to boycott the school for clerkship hiring. And yet, these rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will hold important government positions, fight constitutional lawsuits, and advise Fortune 500 companies.

In LAWLESS, Shapiro uses his personal experience and deep research to explain 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. Columbia Law School once produced leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Today, it produces window-smashing activists. We’re handing the reins of power to lawless radicals who will be America’s future judges, prosecutors, politicians, and presidents. Unless we stop it now, the consequences will be with us for decades.

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 Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, USA Today, and National Review. He holds degrees from the University of Chicago Law School and Princeton University.

ABOUT THE BOOK

LAWLESS: The Miseducation of America’s Elites by Ilya Shapiro

Broadside Books

On sale January 14, 2025

Hardcover ISBN: 9780063336582/ $29.99

eBook ISBN: 9780063336599 / $14.99