Apparently, the University of Chicago Law School ain’t what she used to be, according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  Once a hotbed of “conservative ethos” and academic rigor, it’s now chopped liver.  Dan Slater at the WSJ Law Blog posts about my favorite judge’s latest slam against the influence of liberals on the legal educational process.

“I regret it,” Scalia said. “I don’t think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school.”

Scalia taught at Chicago from 1977 to 1982, the halcyon days of conservative thought.  Naturally, it could only slide downhill after his departure.  In his speech to 500 members of the Federalist Society in honor of Constitution Day (no irony there), Nino left no doubt about his disappointment in Chicago’s fall from grace.

Oddly enough, this would be the same University of Chicago that went slumming to fill the slot left open by the departure of such luminaries as Scalia.  From the Chicago Sun-Times :

After Scalia left the school, it hired now-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and started offering classes like Obama’s popular “Current issues in Racism and the Law.”

And Justice Scalia similarly had some thoughts on the sort of classes the law school should offer.

Scalia also had advice for students. “I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not ‘Law and Poverty,’ or other made-up stuff,” said Scalia, a Harvard law grad. “Take serious classes,” he urged students. “There’s so much law to learn. Don’t waste your time.”

Made-up stuff?  Ouch.  Not that I necessarily disagree with him, but if you’ve got the time to take Law and Pottery, there’s probably something more useful you could do with your time.  Like learn to be a lawyer.

But Nino wasn’t ready to give up the podium just yet.  After all, with 500 fawning sycophants hanging on your every word, this was an opportunity to draw blood by slamming the liberal elitist view that the toxic combination of education and thoughtfulness is the root of all evil.

“What did I learn at Harvard Law School or at my practice in Ohio or in the federal government that qualifies me to determine whether there ought to be — and therefore is — a right to abortion or to homosexual sodomy or a right to suicide?” Scalia asked. “I don’t know any more about that than Joe Six-pack.”

That’s quite an admission.  Anybody wanna bet that he still won’t recuse himself when these cases come before the court on the basis of abject ignorance?