When discussions turn to free expression in higher education, a common assumption is that those with the lowest amount of job security feel the least free to speak. Junior faculty, adjunct instructors, and others without tenure are often presumed to be the most cautious, while senior professors are presumed to enjoy and exercise greater freedom to study, teach, or debate whatever they want without fear of reprisal. And survey data does support this. For example, among faculty in the academy at large non-tenured faculty are more likely to self-censor than tenured/tenure-track faculty.
But results from FIRE’s 2026 survey of nearly 2,000 law faculty suggest the reality may be more complicated. Among law faculty on the traditional academic ladder (assistant professor to associate professor to full professor), a familiar pattern emerges. Assistant professors were the most likely to report that they had refrained from expressing an opinion because of how students, colleagues, or administrators would respond. This reported self-censorship declined in step among associate professors, and then further among full and chaired professors.
This pattern may not be especially surprising. Advancement through the academic ranks is generally associated with acquiring greater status, job security, and professional autonomy. Thus, law faculty who have already earned tenure and established their reputations may feel less vulnerable to some of the social and professional pressures that can accompany controversial research.
It follows then that faculty at higher ranks were also less worried about losing their job because someone misunderstands something they have said or done. But one group did not fit this pattern. When the analysis was expanded to include law faculty who are adjuncts or lecturers — faculty who are not on the tenure-track and are generally at-will employees — something different emerged. And the data points are directly contrary to other findings involving this population in the broader academy.
Law adjuncts and lecturers, on average, reported less self-censorship than all ranks of tenured/tenure-track law faculty. They also reported being more comfortable discussing controversial topics than even chaired and distinguished professors, and were less worried about damaging their reputation because someone misunderstands something they have said or done. No meaningful differences emerged between the two groups for worry about losing their job.
While the survey itself can’t answer directly why law adjuncts and lecturers are such an anomaly, the structure of the legal academy suggests one possibility. Law schools, like other academic disciplines, rely on adjuncts and lecturers for teaching. But unlike many other academic disciplines, the professional identities of these instructors typically lie outside the academy. Law adjuncts and lecturers often include sitting and retired judges, practicing attorneys, law firm partners, prosecutors, public defenders, corporate counsels, elected officials, and other professionals who teach part-time while maintaining careers elsewhere.
For these instructors, teaching at a law school may be only one part of a much more expansive professional life. Their income, status, and reputation are likely less dependent on the approval of others. Instead, they are there to lend their expertise and teach. Period. And if their views or expertise are unwelcome or labeled as offensive, then it is the school’s loss. Or at least that’s one possibility.
Sure, nobody wants to receive poor student evaluations or to receive a cold shoulder from colleagues in the hall. But for adjuncts and lecturers, it likely matters a lot less what students, academic colleagues, faculty committees, or university administrators think. Thus, for free expression in the broader legal academy the distinction may not be simply tenured versus non-tenured. But instead it may be the degree to which one’s professional future depends on the academic institution itself, and on the broader social reputational system within the academy.
The legal academy occupies a unique position among academic fields, in part because law schools sit at the intersection of higher education and the legal profession, drawing faculty from both worlds. The survey’s findings by faculty rank suggests that the distinctions between ranks in this field matters. Whether, though, the patterns outlined here reflect differences in status, professional independence, or something else entirely remains an open question.
Even still, these results appear to point in a novel direction: in legal education, the faculty who feel the freest to speak may not be those at the top of the academic ladder, but instead those who are on a different ladder entirely.
For more data points on the free expression climate in law schools, check out the law faculty survey report.
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