What happens when law professors go to court on their own account?
To date, it appears no one has systematically examined lawsuits brought by law professors.[Fn.10] Yet doing so provides a different way to look at the academy and obtain a sense of what it means to work and have a career as a law professor. What is particularly striking is how often the same three issues are at the root of these lawsuits: dissatisfaction with, and professional jealousy of, faculty colleagues; disagreements with, and distrust of, administrators; and a feeling that others are receiving better, and undeserved, treatment.Answer? They are frivolous, indiscriminate, thin-skinned and they usually lose. Dunning-Kruger crossed with Philip Tetlock.
[Fn.10: Individual reporting of such lawsuits, on the other hand, occurs regularly on such web sites as Above the Law, Jonathan Turley, TaxProf Blog, The Faculty Lounge, and The Volokh Conspiracy.]
Several other things stand out about these cases. First, although a few early decisions do exist, these types of actions did not really take off until fairly recently. Second, the defendants in these cases are not always employers—sometimes, they are outside parties. Third, law professors generally do a poor job assessing their chances, for they lose much more often than they win. And fourth, many law professors are guilty of a shocking level of thin-skinnedness.
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