University of Virginia School of Law — Exposed 

To graduate from the 8th-ranked University of Virginia School of Law these days, you have to demonstrate an “understanding” of “bias/racism/cross-cultural dependency.” Granted, the school’s website doesn’t explain what that means, but the course catalog does indicate which offerings would satisfy that politically correct requirement.

Clearly, the left’s Woke obsessions with race, gender, abortion, and other tenets of political orthodoxy are now officially ensconced at the public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 to “advance human knowledge, educate leaders, and cultivate an informed citizenry.”

PJMedia’s series on the country’s “top” law schools, as rated by U.S. News and World Report for the 2022-2023 school year, has illuminated the bad, the ugly, and the uglier at the supposedly “elite” institutions charged with instructing our nation’s next generation of lawyers. 

The good news out of Charlottesville is that UVA’s law school curriculum is not quite as steeped in far-left wokeism as those at Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, UPenn, and NYU. It does, however, seem to be going down the same, lamentable path — a not surprising development. 

For example, the UVA Law website proudly boasts a “0.5% nonbinary, transgender or gender-nonconforming” population, in addition to 48.4% men and 51.1% women.  A quick lesson in basic biology at UVA’s well-known School of Medicine would seem to be in order for the law school’s administrators, including its dean, Risa L. Goluboff. Probably no surprise that Dean Goluboff got her law degree from Yale, home to a truly wacky curriculum. 

The UVA website proudly notes that 33% of the students “identify themselves as people of color” (and suggests that its POC cred should be even higher considering that “people of Middle Eastern descent… are counted as Caucasian by the ABA”). It’s unclear how one “identifies” as a race. Does that mean if I were to “identify” as Asian (although my mother was German and my father was Russian) on my law school application, I would be listed in the school’s statistics as Asian?

Another lesson in basic genetics from the School of Medicine would seem to be in order for Dean Goluboff and her administrators. 

Indulging its obsession with race, UVA has now established a Center for the Study of Race and Law to guide law students. Apparently, “lawyers cannot fully understand the American legal landscape without studying the impact of race.” The Center offers courses such as “Does Cash Bail Deter Misconduct,” which posits that there is “little empirical evidence” that requiring cash bail helps ensure that defendants will appear in court and “abstain from crime.” Tell that to the residents of the cities across the country that adopted the “no-cash” bail rule pushed by liberal activists. It has led to huge increases in crimes. 

Students who take the Decarceration and Community Reentry Clinic will be trained to “investigate structural racism and classism in the criminal legal system” that has led to “mass incarceration.” The clinic is dedicated to turning these students into social justice warriors who will fight to defund the police and empty our prisons by teaching them “social entrepreneurship, policy, movement building, and community organizing.”

Administrators also feel it is imperative that UVA law students understand the “challenges” that climate change “poses to legal instruments and policy regimes, as well as to the normative values and philosophies that inform them.” Hence, there is a class entitled “Climate Change, Law, and Climate Ethics” whereby students can learn to interpret the law through “the light of ideas from climate ethics.” 

The course also promises to teach the “underlying science behind climate change.” But one has to wonder if the class will include the scientific literature that contests the “common knowledge” about climate change. Will they, for example, cover the concerns raised about the flawed climate computer models used in the underlying “science”?  I seriously doubt it.

In a follow-up course, students can take “Climate and Debt.” The attempt to achieve “net zero,” though doomed to fail, is expected to cost tens of trillions of dollars. Clearly, there’s more money to be made there than in chasing ambulances. So this class will teach students all about “green bonds, sustainability-linked bonds and loans, carbon trading” and other mechanisms of addressing climate debt. The legal gravy train will be painted a bright, bright green at the cost of the American taxpayer. 

In “Feminism and the Free Market,” students will be taught about the “role of markets in promoting (or inhibiting) the full participation of women in society.” Markets include “sales of ova and embryos; surrogacy services [and] sex work.” The class will also explore “societal expectations of generosity and self-interest; [and] women’s lives under socialism and communism.” Or, if that does not suit your fancy, in “Feminist Jurisprudence,” students can directly address the “challenges raised by critical race feminism and queer legal theory.” 

UVA also has courses on abortion and the horrible (in the minds of liberal law school professors) Dobbs Supreme Court decision that overruled Roe v. Wade.  According to Religious Freedom and Reproductive Rights, Dobbs imposed “new restrictions on abortion.” Of course, Dobbs did no such thing; the Court merely said that the issue of abortion is not covered in the U.S. Constitution, and it is up to the people and their elected representatives to determine the extent of abortion rights.  

But that misleading recitation of the holding already tells you what you need to know about this biased course, as does the course description’s absurd assertion that there are “free exercise rights” under the First Amendment for “those who are religiously motivated to seek, provide, or facilitate abortion services.” Religiously motivated to seek an abortion? That is a claim that will almost certainly not pass muster under the First Amendment.

Given that we are supposedly a structurally and irredeemably racist country, students will want to take “Race, Class, and Democratic Legitimacy” so they can learn about the “gaps between theory, law, and practice for those who are disadvantaged by race and/or class.” They will be taught about “subordination and citizenship” and the “successes and challenges of the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements.”   

That probably won’t include a lesson on how, as long as you present yourself as a BLM crusader for racial justice, you can get away without being prosecuted for assault, arson, looting, and otherwise organizing and participating in mayhem on the streets of American cities. That is a real lesson in unequal justice. Students will be pleased to know that this course satisfies the UVA “Bias/Racism/Cross-Cultural Competency” requirement.

UVA does still offer many of the basic courses that students in law schools should be taking, like civil procedure, contracts, torts, and property law. So, despite the courses described here, you might still be able to get a somewhat normal law school education in Charlottesville. 

It will cost you over $100,000 per year, but that’s still cheaper than places like Harvard or Yale.

Traditionally, UVA students — at least those who don’t want to erase his presence from the university — were advised to ask themselves: What would Mr. Jefferson do? Well, if Thomas Jefferson were alive today and looking to hire an unbiased, professional lawyer with a comprehensive understanding of the law, he would be sure to carefully comb through the transcript of a prospective University of Virginia law school graduate before making a hiring decision.