A new report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, says liberal professors far outnumber conservative ones in the law school courses that shape how election cases are taught and eventually litigated in court.
The group reviewed election-law courses and faculty at all 198 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association. It found that among schools offering election-law classes, left-leaning professors outnumber right-of-center professors 76 to 12 — a ratio of nearly 7 to 1. Most of the election-law centers identified in the report are based at universities in New York and California.
The report also found that 70% of election-law classes at top schools are taught by professors it characterizes as having a left-leaning ideological bias.
What the report argues
PILF President J. Christian Adams told Fox News Digital that the imbalance has consequences beyond the classroom.
“There are so many left-wing lawyers in election law that it creates policy outcomes, election law changes, adapts, and election integrity statutes get struck down because there’s so many lawyers on the other side,” Adams said.
Adams said no one had previously tried to measure the ideological makeup of election-law faculty nationwide. “So, for the first time ever, Public Interest Legal Foundation went in and quantified the election law professors in the country and figured out if they’re liberal or conservative and it’s overwhelming. An absolute dangerous imbalance,” he said.
The report contends that law students are trained to challenge voter ID laws, citizenship-verification requirements, redistricting maps and voter-roll maintenance, then go on to work at liberal nonprofits and major law firms that pursue those same challenges in court. It cites course material referencing “voter suppression,” racial and partisan gerrymandering, felony disenfranchisement, the Electoral College and “election subversion.”
Among the examples cited is a Harvard course called “Bonobo Sisterhood,” which examines what bonobos can teach humans about building a society free of male sexual coercion. The report also points to election-law courses at Harvard, the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley that address social justice, racial inequity, voter suppression and proposals to restructure the Electoral College.
A courtroom example from Texas
Adams, who litigated a redistricting case in Galveston County, Texas, said the imbalance plays out directly in courtrooms. He told Fox News Digital that the left often brings a much larger legal team to hearings, outnumbering conservative attorneys “five, six, seven times” in some cases.
“In that trial, it was so many lawyers on the other side, not only at the regular lawyer table, they filled the jury box,” Adams said. “It was like 25 to five.”
Adams said “anytime voter ID hangs in the balance, the left sends an army,” while “conservatives defending election integrity just don’t have the horses.”
He said the culture on many law school campuses makes it harder for conservative students and lawyers to gain a foothold. “I’ve spoken at 75 law schools, and at many of them, conservatives show up as an anomaly rather than as active participants. But that’s not true everywhere,” he said.
Adams also noted that many law schools, regardless of political leaning, simply don’t offer election-law programs at all. “There’s no reason almost none of the law schools in Texas should teach election law. That’s something the legislature could fix by funding an election law chair at one of the state’s public universities,” he said.
The report stops short of claiming that every professor identified as left-leaning pushes for a specific legal outcome, or that ideology alone decides how election cases are resolved. Instead, PILF argues the imbalance shapes which students enter election law, where they go to work afterward, and ultimately who ends up representing each side in court — leaving conservative attorneys with fewer specialized colleagues and less institutional support when defending election-integrity laws.
“We can solve this problem of this dangerous imbalance in election litigation, but we have to start to solve it,” Adams said.
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Harvard, UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan law schools for comment.
