A nice (and amusing) post here about why George Mason was the only law school to submit a brief in support of the military in the Solomon Amendment case.

(While the other 'elite' law professors were summarily shot down.)

From the NYT article:

On Monday, the best minds in the legal business struck out. The vote was 8-to-0 against them — a shutout, a rout, a humiliation. It is one thing for liberal academics to fail to persuade conservative justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. But the law professors did not produce so much as a sympathetic word from liberal justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens. (The newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr., did not participate.)

And if the result was not embarrassing enough, there was also the tone of the court's unanimous decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. In patient cadences, the kind you use in addressing a slightly dull child ...."

Here is a piece by George Mason Law Professor David Bernstein on the matter, and his post on the Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Also, a piece in The Weekly Standard by Professor Peter Berkowitz, also of Mason.

TaxProf Blog has an excerpt of an article about my law school (Mason) in the National Review, as well as a couple of links (here and here) to the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog where some Mason Law professors (among others) regularly chat about things.

The article talks about the conservative character of the school, and its rapid rise in quality, rankings, and reputation over recent years. From what I've heard, we should be ranked in the 30's in the upcoming U.S. News rankings, and are ranked much higher by other sources.

I've come to realize over my three years at the school, that although I had nary an inkling of it at the outset, I would likely have been much less happy at another law school. At Mason, economics is used as a tool and model for explaining not only the effects of law, but also the ex ante motivations for law. Although a few professors rely on classical moralistic or ethical bases for their reasoning about the law, most attempt to find less squishy principles to more firmly ground their reasoning.

This fits me well, as an erstwhile and still occasional software engineer; it also fits me as a rational, pragmatic, and economic conservative. I'm glad that I happened to stumble upon one of the few schools that could provide me with the mental tools to learn and think about the law in ways that I believe make much more sense than the approaches taken at most other law schools.

I believe that the upward trend of the school will continue, not least because there is a real need and desire for the more conservative approaches it fosters. There is a large body of smart people out there who are not hostile to capitalism, but find themselves somewhat unwelcome in much of academia, partly because their approaches make sense, but don't always make people feel warm and cuddly.

Good stuff. :)