News and Commentary

Liberal Law Prof Turley: Not A ‘Sin’ To Testify For Republicans

   DailyWire.com
Jonathan Turley, J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro professor of public interest law at the George Washington University Law School, delivers an opening statement during a House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019. The impeachment of President Donald Trump moves to one of the most polarized committees in Congress where Republicans known for their combativeness will pose a test of the judiciary chairman's ability to keep the proceedings under control.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Earlier this month, in the lead-up to House Democrats’ (kind of/sort of) formal impeachment of President Donald Trump, the Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)-led House Judiciary Committee convened a panel of three law professors: Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Noah Feldman of Harvard, and Jonathan Turley of George Washington. The ostensible reason for Nadler’s summoning of this troika was to air a public discussion of what the U.S. Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” impeachment criterion actually means — a rather curious use of time and taxpayer resources, alas, considering that Alexander Hamilton told us precisely what it meant in The Federalist No. 65.

This triumvirate of ivory tower overlords, moreover, was hardly politically or ideologically diverse. Karlan is an unreconstructed leftist so radical that former President Barack Obama did not even consider her for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination. Feldman is a traditional liberal — hardly one to find compelling the notion that a legal text ought to only be interpreted according to its original public meaning. Turley, the Republican-called witness who was most favorable toward Trump’s impeachment defense narrative, is nonetheless best described as a left-leaning civil libertarian. He is hardly a partisan Trump supporter.

Alas, Turley’s testimony elicited intensive backlash from fellow liberals and fellow members of the cloistered legal academy. As Turley snarkily tweeted, linking to an op-ed he published over the holiday weekend at The Hill: “The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.”

“Journalist Henry Louis Mencken once observed, ‘Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them,'” Turley began. “Despite unending respect for Mencken, this is an occasion in which I found him mistaken, after I violated the Eleventh Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.'”

Turley’s piece continued with oftentimes dripping sarcasm. The professor clearly harbors no small amount of disdain for the intellectual and political monoculture that the Left oftentimes attempts to forcibly impose from the heights of academe.

“What is most striking about this commandment is that it does not matter if your testimony is made in good faith,” he wrote. “For instance, under the Ninth Commandment, you are only guilty if you give false evidence against your neighbor. But under the Eleventh Commandment, it does matter if your testimony is true or false. A law fearing academic must not give any testimony for Republicans. … It is the act of testifying for Republicans that is deemed a sin against the legal academy.”

“[H]eresy demands condemnation, whether or not it is based in reality,” Turley concluded. “This is all meant to get people to not seriously consider the flaws in this impeachment, including the articles that ultimately were dropped. For any academic who is tempted to testify for Republicans in an impeachment, I can only caution that the Bible said, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.'”

Political and ideological diversity is an infamous and pervasive problem throughout much of American academia — with legal academia among the most grievous of all offenders. Recently, conservative law professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA wrote a widely disseminated blog post about how he, as a conservative white Catholic, actively contributes to diversity (properly understood) at UCLA School of Law:

At UCLA, we know that the campus as a whole leans substantially to the left. “A study of various university faculties showed that at Cornell the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty members was 166 to 6, at Stanford it was 151 to 17, at UCLA it was 141 to 9, and at the University of Colorado it was 116 to 5.” Conservative students at UCLA have been “harassed, stalked, and threatened.” I recently searched the opensecrets.org donor database for political contributions made by persons who claimed UCLA School of Law as their employer. Thirty-eight of those persons contributed solely to Democratic candidates, the Democratic Party and various affiliates, and liberal PACs. One person contributed to both Republicans and Democrats. Three persons contributed exclusively to Republican candidates, the Republican Party, and various NRC affiliates. Of the faculty members who contributed exclusively to Republican candidates, the most recently hired of the two was hired in 1997. As a monetary matter, 92.67% of all contributions went to Democrats and affiliated groups.

Because conservative students and students of faith often feel alienated and estranged in an environment that is so relentlessly liberal and secular, I have made particular efforts to reach out to and support such students. I have served as a mentor for leaders of The Federalist Society and Christian Law Students Association. I have given talks to both organizations. I taught a Perspectives on law and Lawyering seminar devoted to Catholic Social Thought and the Law, which gave students — whether Catholic or not — an opportunity to consider how their faith (or lack thereof) related to the law and an opportunity to learn about a coherent body of Christian scholarship that might inform their lives as lawyers. I have also tried to lead by example, such as by serving as a volunteer with the Good Shepherd Catholic Church’s St. Vincent de Paul chapter, which raises funds for distribution to poor persons who are in danger of losing their home due to inability to make rent or mortgage payments.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  Liberal Law Prof Turley: Not A ‘Sin’ To Testify For Republicans