The Sunday New York Times carried an interesting article on the political diversity of law school faculties (If the Law Is an Ass, the Law Professor Is a Donkey):

The study [by John McGinnis (Northwestern)], to be published this fall in The Georgetown Law Journal, analyzes 11 years of records reflecting federal campaign contributions by professors at the top 21 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Almost a third of these law professors contribute to campaigns, but of them, the study finds, 81% who contributed $200 or more gave wholly or mostly to Democrats; 15% gave wholly or mostly to Republicans. The percentages of professors contributing to Democrats were even more lopsided at some of the most prestigious schools: 91% at Harvard, 92% at Yale, 94% at Stanford.

As you can imagine, the article has attracted a lot of attention in the law prof blogosphere, with folks weighing in from all over the political spectrum:

• Ann Althouse (Wisconsin) on Althouse
• Steve Bainbridge (UCLA) on ProfessorBainbridge.com
• Eric Goldman (Marquette) on Goldman’s Observations
• Dave Hoffman (Temple) on PrawfsBlawg
• Brian Leiter (Texas) on Leiter’s Law School Reports
• Jim Lindgren (Northwestern) on The Volokh Conspiracy
• Dale Oesterle (Ohio State) on Business Law Prof Blog
• Tom Smith (San Diego) on The Right Coast
• Tung Yin (Iowa) on The Yin Blog
• Pejman Yousefzadeh on RedState.org
• Todd Zywicki (George Mason) on The Volokh Conspiracy

Where is the tax angle?  Check out this comment by Eric Rasmussen, who argues that the political ideology of Tax Profs is unimportant:

We could carry the diversity analysis further. How many law school professors in legal fields where ideology is important are conservatives?

I doubt that much hangs on whether a professor teaching tax, securities, or commercial law is liberal or conservative. Where ideology counts is in constitutional law, and perhaps in criminal law and procedure and administrative law. If we exclude the private law fields (contracts, torts, property), how many conservatives are there?

This is important, too, to judging the efforts of law schools to advance or stop diversity. The market for professors of tax and commercial law is a lot tighter than for constitutional law, and law faculties don’t care as much about who they hire in those positions, so long as they can get someone intelligent to teach the courses. Ideology is less important. It is in the optional fields — adding yet another prof who wants to teach con law, or a prof in some peripheral field such as international law or jurisprudence or Roman law that one will find a law school most free to indulge in ideologically motivated hiring.

Jack Jackson objects:

I doubt that much hangs on whether a professor teaching tax, securities, or commercial law is liberal or conservative.

This is stunning in its casual ignorance. Those classes are rife with policy issues like inequality and income redistribution. It certainly does matter whether your income tax professor is a radical Marxist or a doctrinaire Hayekian….Just because it seems dry doesn’t mean it is dry.