Judge Dennis Jacobs on Hostility to the Military Among Legal Elites

A few days ago, Judge Dennis Jacobs (Second Circuit) gave the 10th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the 2010 Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention.  His core claim is that a variety of elite legal institutions--bar associations, law schools (especially their clinics, but of course also the professors themselves), and large law firms (especially their pro bono programs)--as a general rule are hostile to the military. His account is exceedingly pessimistic, and to my mind rather dramatically overstated.  It just does not resonate with my own sense of how the military and its various institutions are perceived these days in academia and in the other circles Judge Jacobs calls out for criticism.  To be sure, there are bound to be many examples of individuals and groups in all these institutions who fit the bill, but I am quite certain that there are many contrary examples.  Perhaps I'm fooling myself, not appreciating how marginal my own views are in academia, but I don't think so.  Even among those individuals and institutions deeply engaged in criticizing post-9/11 national security policies--a category of legal elites that gets a lot of attention in this speech--my sense is that most have a tremendous amount of respect for the military. In any event, it's a provocative and interesting speech, moving from the general claim of widespread institutional hostility to a host of more specific observations regarding the link between it and particular issues such as the GTMO litigation, military recruiting on campus, the role of judicial involvement with respect to defense and intelligence operations, and the like.   The whole thing runs about half an hour, so check it out.