I wonder if there is any correlation between (a) the ideological diversity of a particular law faculty & (b) the degree to which that faculty's scholarship in the area of public law identifies & engages seriously with counter-arguments. Probably can't measure this, but I wonder.
Some have asked why this might be, and here's the thinking (which is a possible theory, not a conclusion). Within public law, ideology often reflects some kind of value disagreement. The more intellectual diversity on a faculty, the more value disagreement likely to have. /1
My question, to which I don't know the answer, is whether the experience of regularly encountering more value disagreement on one's faculty can impact the range of values to which public law scholarship on that faculty might tend to address. /2
My sense is that there's an academic norm among lawprofs of responding to counterarguments when a prof's experience is that, for lack of a better description, "some serious people are giving me pushback on this argument based on reason X." /3
If that's right, I wonder if the ideological range a prof encounters on her own faculty helps define that sense, & might change likelihood of noting & responding to counterarguments that, in public law, are also often value-dependent. Or maybe not the case at all, just wonderin'.
