Yale Law Professor Samuel Moyn has authored a New York Times essay (“Liberals Bet They Could Beat Trump With the Law, Nov. 22, 2024), which seems to demonstrate that he doesn’t understand, or care to acknowledge, the law from lawfare, or right from wrong. 

He abandons professional objectivity in front of his students—and before the public he writes to. He thereby violates the rules and guidelines of his own profession.

This is the same Yale Law professor who argued in the same newspaper, that we should throw out the Constitution.  Ironically, that is exactly what his political party did.

Moyn argues, in classic academic misuse of reasoning, that President Trump somehow escaped the jaws of justice, because the prosecutors over-relied on law, or from “legalism.”  What is really happening is that Trump continues to prevail with actual defense law on his side. He is using law to beat the corrupt “lawfare” used against him.  That’s called justice.

President Trump is giving the public, and students, a justice lesson for all time, and a major, landmark case for the law school text books.  

Moyn doesn’t seem to appreciate that the DNC did indeed “bet” against President Trump (not a good idea) and lost a wager in law; but the DNC wagered by breaking that law, as the cases continue to fall apart. The partisan judges in the cases have lost most of all: their professional credibility from undermining public confidence in the legal system. 

It is a disservice to law students, the public, and the legal profession, that the Yale professor is allowed an audience in this way, in the process distorting legal principles, rewriting history, and corrupting legal doctrine. This comes from interpreting academic freedom as unlimited speech entitlement. Silence often expresses more: academic maturity. 

This gives incoming Education Secretary Linda McMahon another key mandate for universities: enforcing rules of professional conduct.  

In law schools, this includes having the mature judgement to uphold neutral principles, as information is conveyed to students.  This is for a good reason: the development of their intellectual independence and self-reliance, rather than being manipulated by the partisan preferences of law professors, who seek to wrongly present that partisanship as expertise. 

Matthew G. Andersson is a former CEO, and author of the upcoming book, “Legally Blind,” concerning law and policy.  He has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and testified to the US Senate. He a graduate of the University of Chicago. 

Image: Adam Jones, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0 DEED