Posted by Ilya Somin: Legal Writing Job Candidate Files Lawsuit Claiming that She Was Rejected by the University of Iowa Law School because of her conservative views: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_01_25-2009_01_31.shtml#1233012244
Carolyn Jones has [1]filed a lawsuit claiming that her application to become a legal writing instructor at the University of Iowa Law School was rejected because of her conservative political views. Press accounts say that she is arguing that denial of this kind of job on ideological grounds violates the First Amendment. I personally don't believe that ideological discrimination in government hiring violates the Constitution. Quite often, "personnel is policy," and both conservative and liberal administrations have a legitimate need to hire people who are ideologically committed to carrying out their policies. There is, in my view, far less justification for ideological discrimination faculty hiring at state universities. After all, universities need ideological diversity in order to further intellectual inquiry and debate. Still, I think there are [2]rare circumstances when a professor's ideology can legitimately be considered in faculty hiring. Be that as it may, I don't believe that universities that engage in more ideological discrimination than I would approve of violate the Constitution. Government involvement in ideologically-driven curriculum and hiring decisions is[3] an inevitable result of having public schools and universities in the first place. Some of this discrimination is ill-advised and unfair. But that doesn't make it unconstitutional. References 1. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/01/unsuccessful-applicant-.html 2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_09_16-2007_09_22.shtml#1189966495 3. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_04_02-2006_04_08.shtml#1144373600 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
