The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
The Populist GOP and its Yale Law and Harvard Law Leaders
A notable dynamic, and one worth trying to explain.
The nomination of J.D. Vance as the Republican party's Vice-Presidential candidate in the upcoming election brings up an interesting contrast. On one hand, today's GOP embraces a heavy dose of populism. It's pretty standard for Republican politicians to rail against elites who are against the average Joe. On the other hand, if you look at the younger generation of GOP leaders, the politicians who are likely to lead the party in coming years, there sure are a lot of Harvard Law School and Yale Law School graduates.
J.D. Vance is one example. He's a graduate of Yale Law School, Class of 2013. But think of other possible future GOP Presidential candidates. There's Senator Joshua Hawley, Yale Law Class of 2006. And lots of Harvard Law grads are in the mix. We have Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Harvard Law Class of 2005 (sort of a crossover, as he went to Yale for college). And Senator Ted Cruz, Harvard Law Class of 1995, where he went after college at Princeton. And there's also Senator Tom Cotton, Harvard Law Class of 2002. I'm probably forgetting others.
It seems worth asking, how is it that the GOP has embraced both populism and a set of prominent figures, at least among the younger generation, who are Harvard Law and Yale Law graduates? Or maybe more specifically, why is it that going to an elite law school seems to be a significant advantage within the GOP?
One answer might be that this is not a story specifically about the GOP at all. There are certainly lots of Democratic leaders who went to these places! It's kinda barfy, if you think about it. If you look at the last eight Presidential elections, six of the eight Democratic Presidential nominees went to Harvard Law or Yale Law. (If you're wondering: Harvard Law's Michael Dukakis was the unsuccessful nominee in 1988; Yale Law's Bill Clinton was the successful nominee in 1992 and 1996; Harvard Law's Barack Obama was the successful nominee in 2008 and 2012; and Yale Law's Hillary Clinton was the unsuccessful nominee in 2016. As I said, kinda barfy.) So maybe this is bipartisan. Maybe the advantages that flow to elite law school grads in politics cover both parties equally. Or maybe smart and ambitious youngsters plotting a political career know that and aim for those kinds of schools.
Maybe.
But I suspect there's something else at work, too. What's striking to me is that Harvard, Yale, and other "top" law schools have only a very small number of conservatives. It's one thing for schools where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans to generate a lot of future Democratic leaders. It's another for them to generate so many future Republican leaders. The odds of a politically ambitious conservative at an elite law school actually becoming a big deal in American politics is unusually high, it seems to me—all the more striking given the GOP's populist turn.
What might explain that? I don't know. I'm curious about what explanations you might have. But let me offer three possibilities, just to get the conversation started:
(1) There's an inside lawyer track that works in GOP politics (Examples: Cruz and Cotton). In some of the cases, the individuals seem to have taken a role as elite lawyers within the party before running for office— using that legal role as a key conservative credential for later political campaigns.
Ted Cruz did this. He clerked at the Supreme Court, served in the Bush Administration, and practiced in DC before he was appointed Solicitor General of his home state of Texas by then-Attorney-General Greg Abbott in 2003—just 8 years after Cruz graduated from law school. He then argued a bunch of Supreme Court cases as state Solicitor General in which, representing Texas, he was on the conservative side. Ted then used his lawyering before the Supreme Court as his key conservative credential to run for the Senate in 2012.
Josh Hawley's path to the Senate was in the same ballpark. After clerking at the Supreme Court and practicing a bit, Hawley returned to his home state of Missouri to be a law professor at the University of Missouri—while also helping to litigate Supreme Court cases on the conservative side. From there, he ran for state Attorney General, winning that race just 10 years after he graduated from law school. And then after just two years as state Attorney General, he won his Senate seat. In both Cruz's and Hawley's cases, they used their academic credentials and legal experience as a key argument for their candidacies. Their legal efforts on behalf of conservative causes at the U.S. Supreme Court apparently resonated with a lot of voters.
(2) Elite law school graduates come off as battle-hardened. Another explanation, more specifically about populism, is that populist conservative voters are fine with voting for conservative graduates of elite law schools because having attended those school affords conservative politicians a sort of veteran status of its own. The politicians running for GOP office don't speak fondly of their time at these schools. Instead, they present their time at Harvard Law or Yale Law as a difficult test of strength that they passed. They spent three years in the trenches of liberalism and they emerged victorious. They are now battle-hardened and ready to fight the liberals while in political office. From that perspective, graduating from these schools isn't a problem. Instead, like a medal on a military uniform, it's a credential.
(3) Adding elite law school credentials to military service creates a powerful combination (Examples: Vance, DeSantis, Cotton). I'm less confident of this one, so maybe this is totally wrong. But speaking of military uniforms, it's hard not to notice that several of these politicians are also veterans. JD Vance served in the Marines from 2003 to 2007, acting, as I understand it, primarily in the role of a journalist and public affairs specialist. Tom Cotton served on active duty as an officer in the Army from 2005 to 2009, where among other things he led an air assault infantry platoon in Iraq. Ron DeSantis joined the Navy in 2004 and was a lawyer for the Navy until his discharge in 2010.
These days, the combination of military service and attending top law schools is (unfortunately) pretty rare. But it's possible that this combination is part of the political appeal here. Maybe adding elite law school credentials to military service works really well together, especially in a GOP primary. It combines patriotism and bookishness, brawn and brains. Not sure about this, but maybe the combination is at least part of what's politically powerful.
