Noah Feldman: Why Yale Law is so good at producing reactionaries like JD Vance

JD Vance’s Yale Law School pedigree came up at least a dozen times at the Republican National Convention. His degree from the institution gives the inexperienced Vance more legitimacy and validates his Horatio Alger story.

The use of elite educational credentials by populist critics of elite education isn’t new. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who went to Yale College and Harvard Law School, did a version of the same thing when he was running for president. Senator Josh Hawley, he of the raised fist on Jan. 6, graduated from Yale Law in 2006. Representative Elise Stefanik, who spent much of the past year grilling college presidents on Capitol Hill, graduated from Harvard College. And Trump himself likes to brag about his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (although at the time, over half of applicants were accepted).

But Vance’s degree is central to his narrative in a way that it’s not for those other politicians. Admission to Yale was his main accomplishment when he wrote his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. It cemented his rise to the elite. It framed Vance as an effective source to “explain” poor White politics (and poor White dysfunction) to the NPR-listening, tote-bag carrying, book-buying public. It’s no exaggeration to say that, without Yale Law School, there could be no phenomenon of JD Vance — at least, not by the tender age of 39.

Yale Law has also played a vital role in legal conservatism. At the Supreme Court, Justices Clarence Thomas (’74) and Samuel Alito (’75) have gone from being peripheral voices to becoming the authors of major new conservative opinions that seem likely to last at least a generation. One of the reasons they have such influence now is the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh (Yale Law ’90). The court currently has an unprecedented four Yale lawyers, including liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor (’79). Together they account for nearly half of the nine Yale law school graduates that have ever sat court.

What makes the prominence of these figures fascinating is that there are so few conservative graduates of Yale Law School. A generation ago, Bill and Hillary Clinton, also both graduates of Yale Law, brought an extended network of their liberal classmates and friends to Washington. Such liberal Yale Law graduates are not hard to find — and remain prominent in a wide range of legal jobs, especially as professors. (I went there myself.)

Yale’s conservatives are something else again. The law school is small to begin with, graduating only around 200 students a year, meaning there are about 600 law students at a time. And while there’s no official count, the number of those who identify as conservative is not likely to be much greater than 10% — and might be smaller. Consider: The photo on the homepage of the Yale Federalist Society chapter features just 20 students.

Their rarity is doubtless one reason Yale Law conservatives ascend so quickly. Consider judicial clerkships. More than half of federal judges are conservative and look for clerks who will support their world view. At the Supreme Court, the conservative-to-liberal ratio is 2 to 1. That gives conservative students a significant leg up, statistically speaking.

As important, however, is the experience of alienation shared by so many Yale Law conservatives, which seems to harden their political views and also becomes a central part of their narratives. Thomas and Alito have both spoken extensively of feeling like outsiders at Yale. Neither came from the upper or upper-middle class. (Kavanaugh, in contrast, who did grow up upper-middle class, used to speak warmly about his social experiences at Yale and remains a relatively moderate conservative.)

Vance, who grew up poor, also experienced a sense of alienation at Yale, one he emphasized in his book and has played up further in his political career. For him, as for Thomas and Alito, Yale Law became a double-edged component of his self-perception and self-presentation. On the one hand, having gone there proves one is now a member of the elite. On the other, being exposed to Yale elites confirms one’s belief that populist conservatism is the right way to see the world.

Vance benefited enormously from Yale, making the connections that helped him to find a top-tier literary agent and launch his career in Silicon Valley. And it’s in part in hopes of providing this kind of elevator for working class students that elite institutions like Yale believe in the value of admitting students from a wide range of backgrounds. I believe in it myself.

But one result is the inevitable emergence of people who use their elite experience to become proponents of anti-elitism. That’s their right.

I would venture to suggest, however, that elite institutions can and should do better in being aware of and trying to minimize the alienation associated with being any kind of an outsider there — whether based on social class, race, religion, or conservative politics. Some culture shock is inevitable so long as elite educational institutions draw so heavily on the children of economic and educational elites. Yet we can teach our students, from day one through graduation, to think harder about the experiences of others, and to take some of the moralizing out of their encounters with people who think differently. The real-world effects might give us more thoughtful graduates and fewer reactionaries.

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Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

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