The End Is Near for the American Bar Association
When the history of the American Bar Association’s downfall is written, one theme will recur: it didn’t have to end this way. By the 1960s, nearly half of the lawyers in the United States were members of the ABA. Congress, Presidents, and the courts consulted the ABA closely as a trusted advisor on all legal matters. Yet, tragically, that trust was squandered when the ABA was captured by the left. Instead of serving as a trade group for lawyers, the ABA became just another left-wing advocacy group. As membership declined, the ABA could have arrested its progressive lurch, but instead accelerated in the wrong direction. The group took liberal positions on abortion, affirmative action, national security, and other controversial issues that had nothing to do with the legal profession. The ABA stopped being relevant decades ago. All that is left is a hollow husk of a once-great entity. Now, the Trump Administration is poised to strike the mortal blow by eliminating the ABA Education Council’s power over law school accreditation. Things didn’t have to end this way, but the ABA brought this endgame onto itself.
I played a small role in trying to stop the ABA’s collapse, which I have not previously discussed, but now wish to share. In early 2023, the Editor of the ABA Journal invited me to write a regular column in the flagship publication. At first I was skeptical. I had long been hostile to the ABA, which had become a left-wing organization that exercised sweeping regulatory authority over law schools. I agreed to write for the Journal under one condition: my columns would be critical of the ABA and progressive orthodoxies. My goal was to upset the status quo. The editor, to his credit, agreed.
My first installment, published in April 2023, was titled “The ABA needs ideological diversity to ensure its future.” I offered a dire warning if the ABA did not moderate its positions: “A future Republican administration may deem the ABA a poor steward of its accreditation power, and the Department of Education can seek other options.”
