While interviewing law students for jobs as paid summer interns and full-time associates for my firm, I noticed several had résumés listing their activities in the Federalist Society. Some of my partners have conservative views similar to those of the society, but I do not. These students’ politics would not affect their professional function, but my review is meant to consider their judgment and personality (though I don’t need to give reasons for the assessments given). May I recommend not hiring someone solely because of his or her politics?
NAME WITHHELD, GREENWICH, CONN.
Randy Cohen Responds:
You may not. If candidates can do the job, bathe regularly and work well with others, you should hire them. As you note, their “politics do not affect their function.” Is it your position that only people who share your politics should be allowed to make a living? It was odious when membership in the Federalist Society was all but required for some jobs in the Justice Department; it is no more appealing to make that affiliation a bar to employment at your firm.
I am tempted to believe that those whose politics differ from mine lack “judgment and personality” and taste in clothes and finesse on the dance floor. But this proposition is unsupportable. As to judgment: politics is famously a subject about which honorable people differ. As to personality — whatever that means — even in an era when radio blowhards fulminate and Tea Party crackpots threaten violence against their political foes, it is possible to disagree with civility. You must abandon your mini-McCarthyism and cease denying employment to those you deem politically misguided.
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