{"id":163138,"date":"2026-09-17T16:04:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/17\/federalist-society-bari-weiss-university-planning-new-law-school-move-over-asslaw\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T16:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:04:06","slug":"federalist-society-bari-weiss-university-planning-new-law-school-move-over-asslaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/17\/federalist-society-bari-weiss-university-planning-new-law-school-move-over-asslaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Federalist Society & Bari Weiss University Planning New Law School\u2026 Move Over ASSLaw!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politicians started chipping away at the American Bar Association\u2019s law school accreditation authority over the last several months. First, a number of states \u2014 including, importantly, Texas<\/a> \u2014 announced that they would stop respecting the ABA\u2019s century of experience vetting legal education. Then the federal government stepped in, with the FTC disingenuously claiming ABA accreditation contributes to rising tuition<\/a>, followed by the Education Department recommending yanking the ABA\u2019s federal recognition altogether.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re getting our first look at what an unregulated legal education environment might look like and of course it involves the Federalist Society and Bari Weiss University. <\/p>\n

The University of Austin was founded by, among others, Weiss and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and marketed \u2014 sometimes explicitly and sometimes stealthily \u2014 as an \u201canti-woke\u201d institution. Basically, the school offers an unaccredited safe space for students who want to read John Locke inside an echo chamber of vapid culture war tropes. Which, of course, closely resembles the hellscape that Weiss \u2014 who has said that the ideological spectrum of acceptable discourse should run from Alan Dershowitz to Dana Loesch<\/a> \u2014 hopes to midwife.<\/p>\n

Larry Summers was once on the advisory board for this school and walked away because he was \u201cnot comfortable with the course that UATX has set.\u201d That dude couldn\u2019t walk away from Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> but took a hard pass on this university.<\/p>\n

As functionally a series of right-wing TEDx talks dressed up as a school, the University of Austin doesn\u2019t have a law school yet, but it has big plans to bring one online as early as 2028. And it took its first step down that road with a Substack manifesto titled: \u201cSave the Constitution. Ditch the ABA,\u201d<\/a> announcing that it is teaming up with the Federalist Society<\/a> to build a new undergrad law program as a precursor to a full law school.<\/p>\n

UATX general counsel Adam Biggs describes it as \u201cbuilding the future of legal education,\u201d which is fair in that dystopias are a kind<\/em> of \u201cfuture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

We begin in the undergrad program because the people who will defend the Constitution are formed before they set foot in law school. With the Federalist Society\u2019s support, we are deepening what we offer our undergraduates with new courses that go further into the Constitution\u2019s text, history, and tradition, taught by judges, practicing lawyers, and scholars. We will host debates on the biggest legal questions shaping society. This will be the most substantial learning experience any student interested in law can have anywhere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ooooooh. You took an undergrad constitutional law course? Guys, drop everything, we\u2019ve got to admit this kid with a con law survey course from an unaccredited school run out of an office building!<\/p>\n

For decades, the Federalist Society has maintained that it\u2019s just a social club for students to get together, listen to salon-style debates, and performatively eat Chick-fil-A to own the libs. In reality, the group has taken on a leading role in the \u201cNo More Souters\u201d-industrial complex, serving as the default vetting and networking pipeline for the right-wing legal movement. It\u2019s a branding that they\u2019ve enforced hard enough that in 2022, they told co-founder Steven Calabresi he could no longer call himself a \u201cfounder\u201d<\/a> after he committed limited ideological heresy. Now they\u2019re drawing up plans for a full curriculum to become a sort of bargain bin PragerU law school.<\/p>\n

To some degree, the Federalist Society is suffering the same fate as the ABA. Last May, Trump called Federalist Society honcho Leonard Leo a \u201csleazebag\u201d who \u201cprobably hates America\u201d<\/a> after Trump appointees had the temerity to rule against him. That said, no one really thinks the Federalist Society has lost its prized position in the conservative legal movement pipeline. Its establishment voices may carry less weight with this administration than they did in the past, but Federalist Society bona fides remain a necessary if no longer sufficient condition within the movement.<\/p>\n

\n

Keeping the Constitution demands lawyers who understand its original meaning, and fewer and fewer do. At the University of Austin (UATX), we built a tuition-free undergraduate program to form citizens and leaders who not only know our founding principles but will defend them. But the country needs a bigger, bolder version of that program, one that forms its future lawyers the same way. We will build it, and we cannot let anyone stand in the way, least of all the American Bar Association (ABA).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the problem is the shortage of judges obsessed with \u201coriginal meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least the post foregrounds its interest in setting up a program more focused on ideology than actually learning the law. It will take detours to indulge the canard that ABA accreditation drives up tuition \u2014 as opposed to U.S. News ranking criteria<\/a> and cuts to support for public institutions. The ABA admitted its standards contributed to higher faculty salaries, but comparing a 5 percent faculty raise to building new high-tech student centers for the brochures is\u2026 well, sort of like comparing the University of Austin to the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s not clear why any of this would matter to the University of Austin since they\u2019re tuition free, backed by a $100 million donation from Jeff Yass. Scolding the education system for high costs reads less genuine when it\u2019s coming from a school funded on billionaire bucks.<\/p>\n

\n

Then there are the clinics, which act as small law firms inside the law school. The ABA\u2019s standards make creating clinics largely unavoidable.<\/p>\n

Students working real cases sounds good, in the abstract. Yet it is the most expensive way to teach anything. A professor teaching Property reaches hundreds of students. A clinical professor works with about eight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nothing says you\u2019ve got your finger on the pulse of the issues facing legal education like a hard stance against<\/em> practical training. Law firms have started hiring fewer graduates<\/a> \u2014 well, fewer students\u2026 they aren\u2019t even waiting for them to graduate anymore \u2014 and the conventional wisdom is that artificial intelligence will drive down the need for young associates even further. And with that, the burden of practical training, which historically skewed more toward the firms, may shift back onto the law schools. Meanwhile, the Federalist Society is eyeing a curriculum with more lecture halls. <\/p>\n

Good luck with that.<\/p>\n

But then, like salmon returning to the rivers where they were spawned, the post gets back to culture war grievances:<\/p>\n

\n

The entrenchment of these politics has likewise led to a deeper failure at these institutions. Too many students now graduate fluent in critical theory yet strangers to the Federalist Papers, trained to critique the Constitution before they understand the tradition that produced it. The grievance-based study of the law undermines the pursuit of truth and instills the belief that the Constitution and our republic are obstacles to be torn down.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cFluent in critical theory yet strangers to the Federalist Papers\u201d plays well to a cable news audience of non-lawyers, but it should face a steep challenge to anyone whose brain isn\u2019t completely cooked. A more fair description of law school would be \u201cfluent in comparative negligence yet strangers to the Federalist Papers\u201d because the former has a lot more relevance to the actual lived experience of attending law school than either alternative.<\/p>\n

But even with Texas breaking from the ABA on law school accreditation, the state supreme court couched its move in terms that could pose problems for this plan. When that court took the accreditation job itself in January, it went out of its way to promise it would seek to preserve the ability of its graduates to use their Texas degrees in other states. Which means Texas cannot approve a school built on the explicit premise of ignoring national standards without breaking from the framework it laid out over the winter.<\/p>\n

You guys, I don\u2019t think ASSLaw has anything to worry about.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Federalist Society & Bari Weiss University Planning New Law School\u2026 Move Over ASSLaw!<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Politicians started chipping away at the American Bar Association\u2019s law school accreditation authority over the last several months. First, a number of states \u2014 including, importantly, Texas<\/a> \u2014 announced that they would stop respecting the ABA\u2019s century of experience vetting legal education. Then the federal government stepped in, with the FTC disingenuously claiming ABA accreditation contributes to rising tuition<\/a>, followed by the Education Department recommending yanking the ABA\u2019s federal recognition altogether.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re getting our first look at what an unregulated legal education environment might look like and of course it involves the Federalist Society and Bari Weiss University. <\/p>\n

The University of Austin was founded by, among others, Weiss and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and marketed \u2014 sometimes explicitly and sometimes stealthily \u2014 as an \u201canti-woke\u201d institution. Basically, the school offers an unaccredited safe space for students who want to read John Locke inside an echo chamber of vapid culture war tropes. Which, of course, closely resembles the hellscape that Weiss \u2014 who has said that the ideological spectrum of acceptable discourse should run from Alan Dershowitz to Dana Loesch<\/a> \u2014 hopes to midwife.<\/p>\n

Larry Summers was once on the advisory board for this school and walked away because he was \u201cnot comfortable with the course that UATX has set.\u201d That dude couldn\u2019t walk away from Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> but took a hard pass on this university.<\/p>\n

As functionally a series of right-wing TEDx talks dressed up as a school, the University of Austin doesn\u2019t have a law school yet, but it has big plans to bring one online as early as 2028. And it took its first step down that road with a Substack manifesto titled: \u201cSave the Constitution. Ditch the ABA,\u201d<\/a> announcing that it is teaming up with the Federalist Society<\/a> to build a new undergrad law program as a precursor to a full law school.<\/p>\n

UATX general counsel Adam Biggs describes it as \u201cbuilding the future of legal education,\u201d which is fair in that dystopias are a kind<\/em> of \u201cfuture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

We begin in the undergrad program because the people who will defend the Constitution are formed before they set foot in law school. With the Federalist Society\u2019s support, we are deepening what we offer our undergraduates with new courses that go further into the Constitution\u2019s text, history, and tradition, taught by judges, practicing lawyers, and scholars. We will host debates on the biggest legal questions shaping society. This will be the most substantial learning experience any student interested in law can have anywhere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ooooooh. You took an undergrad constitutional law course? Guys, drop everything, we\u2019ve got to admit this kid with a con law survey course from an unaccredited school run out of an office building!<\/p>\n

For decades, the Federalist Society has maintained that it\u2019s just a social club for students to get together, listen to salon-style debates, and performatively eat Chick-fil-A to own the libs. In reality, the group has taken on a leading role in the \u201cNo More Souters\u201d-industrial complex, serving as the default vetting and networking pipeline for the right-wing legal movement. It\u2019s a branding that they\u2019ve enforced hard enough that in 2022, they told co-founder Steven Calabresi he could no longer call himself a \u201cfounder\u201d<\/a> after he committed limited ideological heresy. Now they\u2019re drawing up plans for a full curriculum to become a sort of bargain bin PragerU law school.<\/p>\n

To some degree, the Federalist Society is suffering the same fate as the ABA. Last May, Trump called Federalist Society honcho Leonard Leo a \u201csleazebag\u201d who \u201cprobably hates America\u201d<\/a> after Trump appointees had the temerity to rule against him. That said, no one really thinks the Federalist Society has lost its prized position in the conservative legal movement pipeline. Its establishment voices may carry less weight with this administration than they did in the past, but Federalist Society bona fides remain a necessary if no longer sufficient condition within the movement.<\/p>\n

\n

Keeping the Constitution demands lawyers who understand its original meaning, and fewer and fewer do. At the University of Austin (UATX), we built a tuition-free undergraduate program to form citizens and leaders who not only know our founding principles but will defend them. But the country needs a bigger, bolder version of that program, one that forms its future lawyers the same way. We will build it, and we cannot let anyone stand in the way, least of all the American Bar Association (ABA).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the problem is the shortage of judges obsessed with \u201coriginal meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least the post foregrounds its interest in setting up a program more focused on ideology than actually learning the law. It will take detours to indulge the canard that ABA accreditation drives up tuition \u2014 as opposed to U.S. News ranking criteria<\/a> and cuts to support for public institutions. The ABA admitted its standards contributed to higher faculty salaries, but comparing a 5 percent faculty raise to building new high-tech student centers for the brochures is\u2026 well, sort of like comparing the University of Austin to the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s not clear why any of this would matter to the University of Austin since they\u2019re tuition free, backed by a $100 million donation from Jeff Yass. Scolding the education system for high costs reads less genuine when it\u2019s coming from a school funded on billionaire bucks.<\/p>\n

\n

Then there are the clinics, which act as small law firms inside the law school. The ABA\u2019s standards make creating clinics largely unavoidable.<\/p>\n

Students working real cases sounds good, in the abstract. Yet it is the most expensive way to teach anything. A professor teaching Property reaches hundreds of students. A clinical professor works with about eight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nothing says you\u2019ve got your finger on the pulse of the issues facing legal education like a hard stance against<\/em> practical training. Law firms have started hiring fewer graduates<\/a> \u2014 well, fewer students\u2026 they aren\u2019t even waiting for them to graduate anymore \u2014 and the conventional wisdom is that artificial intelligence will drive down the need for young associates even further. And with that, the burden of practical training, which historically skewed more toward the firms, may shift back onto the law schools. Meanwhile, the Federalist Society is eyeing a curriculum with more lecture halls. <\/p>\n

Good luck with that.<\/p>\n

But then, like salmon returning to the rivers where they were spawned, the post gets back to culture war grievances:<\/p>\n

\n

The entrenchment of these politics has likewise led to a deeper failure at these institutions. Too many students now graduate fluent in critical theory yet strangers to the Federalist Papers, trained to critique the Constitution before they understand the tradition that produced it. The grievance-based study of the law undermines the pursuit of truth and instills the belief that the Constitution and our republic are obstacles to be torn down.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cFluent in critical theory yet strangers to the Federalist Papers\u201d plays well to a cable news audience of non-lawyers, but it should face a steep challenge to anyone whose brain isn\u2019t completely cooked. A more fair description of law school would be \u201cfluent in comparative negligence yet strangers to the Federalist Papers\u201d because the former has a lot more relevance to the actual lived experience of attending law school than either alternative.<\/p>\n

But even with Texas breaking from the ABA on law school accreditation, the state supreme court couched its move in terms that could pose problems for this plan. When that court took the accreditation job itself in January, it went out of its way to promise it would seek to preserve the ability of its graduates to use their Texas degrees in other states. Which means Texas cannot approve a school built on the explicit premise of ignoring national standards without breaking from the framework it laid out over the winter.<\/p>\n

You guys, I don\u2019t think ASSLaw has anything to worry about.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicians started chipping away at the American Bar Association\u2019s law school accreditation authority over the last several months. First, a number of states \u2014 including, importantly, Texas \u2014 announced that they would stop respecting the ABA\u2019s century of experience vetting legal education. Then the federal government stepped in, with the FTC disingenuously claiming ABA accreditation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}