There's a Monopoly Lawyers Don't Want to Break Up—Their Own.

America supposedly hates monopolies.

We break them up when one company controls an industry, limits competition and raises prices. But when a private organization controls the principal credential required to enter a profession, we call it accreditation.

For lawyers, that organization is the American Bar Association—and it stopped behaving like a neutral professional association a long time ago.

For decades, the ABA has served as the gatekeeper to the legal profession. It may not issue law licenses itself, but in most states, aspiring lawyers have had to pass through an ABA-accredited law school before they could even try to earn one.

That gave the ABA a government-backed near-monopoly over entry into American law.

That would be troubling even if the ABA were a restrained, politically neutral accreditor. It isn’t. The organization has increasingly behaved less like a professional association and more like a left-wing political advocacy group.

Its positions on abortion, guns, racial policy, immigration and judicial nominees are distinctly left-wing. The problem isn’t simply that the ABA has political views. It is that the same organization also holds enormous power over who gets to become—and remain—a lawyer.

That arrangement is more than troubling. It is untenable.

The ABA is entitled to hold political opinions, pass resolutions and lobby Congress. But should a politically aligned advocacy organization also be allowed to help determine who enters the legal profession, which law schools count and what values those schools must promote?

That is the real question.

There is a fundamental conflict between being an ideological advocacy organization and serving as the supposedly neutral authority that determines which law schools count. The ABA wants to play both roles: political participant when it speaks and detached professional expert when it exercises power.

It can’t credibly be both.

States can establish rigorous requirements for legal education without outsourcing the entire judgment to one private organization. They can recognize multiple legitimate accreditors, permit alternative educational models and judge schools by measurable outcomes such as bar passage, employment, cost and professional discipline.

Competition doesn’t mean abandoning standards. It means allowing more than one institution to define how those standards can be met.

We understand this principle almost everywhere else. When one corporation dominates a market, we encourage competitors. When one political party controls a city for generations, we expect complacency and corruption. When one media organization controls information, we value alternative voices.

Concentrated power becomes self-serving.

The ABA is no exception simply because its members wear suits and speak in the vocabulary of professional responsibility.

States are finally beginning to reconsider the arrangement. They aren’t abolishing legal education or declaring that anyone with a briefcase may practice law. They are asking a more basic question: Why should a single private association possess such enormous control over entry into one of America’s most important professions?

It shouldn't.

An organization that wants to function as a political actor should be treated like one. It shouldn’t be treated as the neutral voice of the entire legal profession. It shouldn’t be permitted to convert ideological preferences into professional requirements. And it shouldn’t retain dominant control over the principal credential needed to enter American law.

Once an institution abandons neutrality, it forfeits the privilege of being everyone’s gatekeeper.