best political science school

Zinhead
Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:27:20 +0000

Most politicos do not end up in an elective office or judgeship’s. They work for governments, law firms, unions, think tanks, lobbying groups, industry trade groups or special interest groups. The judges I personally know were very active in the one of the two political parties most of their careers, volunteered much of their time to political campaigns, and made a great many political contributions to a wide variety of elected officials in the hope that one of them would be in a position to nominate them to a judgeship one day. Once they became judges, they have to campaign to retain their position.

Some examples:

One judge I know was married to and then divorced when young. Her ex-husband eventually became the County Democratic chief, and got her appointed to the bench.

Another was married to a politics beat reporter of a major newspaper who made a practice of writing very favorable articles of local elected officials. They in turn made her one of the youngest judges in the county.

Another worked for the county in his 20’s, then left for private practice and steadily gave money to the dominant local party for 25 years. When he wanted to retire from private practice, he called in some favors and got appointed a county judge. He worked for two years in that position, and, when combined with his earlier time in the system, he vested his pension and retired for good at 80% of his final salary.

For future politicos, the best bet would be some combination for undergraduate/law school of the state flagship and the highest/most local T-14 school you can get into. You probably want to attend a different law/graduate school in order to maximize your network.

Of the private schools you listed, if you are conservative, I would prefer Dartmouth over Duke primarily because of the Dartmouth Review. It is considered somewhat of a training ground for conservative thinkers, and they have a very good alumni network.