This year, two competing academic worldviews are stepping up to help train the next generation of economic, legal and policy personnel. The stakes are high. As we know, personnel is policy and the battle over economic policy is increasingly a battle over institutional talent pipelines.
The first is the Institute for Consumer Financial Choice (ICFC) at the Law and Economics Center, at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. The ICFC will champion rigorous empirical academic research on issues related to consumer choice. No one understands consumers better than consumers themselves.
This Institute will convene scholars, generate actionable research, and engage directly with policymakers. It will provide legislative testimony, publish op-eds, and file amicus briefs to inform courts. It will train the next generation of lawyers and policymakers to view markets as powerful ways to solve problems. Some of them will carry that mindset into government.
Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the activist chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden, has announced the founding of the Center for Law and the Economy at Columbia University, where she returned after her time in Washington.
According to the press release announcing the Center’s founding, the Center “will have two key missions.” The first is the conventional academic center, which promotes scholarship and policy research on matters of concern to the Center’s leadership and funders.
Were that the extent of it, Khan’s new Center would barely raise eyebrows in the public policy space. But the second part of the Center’s mission is eye-opening.
Unlike other conventional academic centers, the Center for Law and the Economy at Columbia intends “to educate, train, and support current students” across the country and to “help train the next generation of legal and economic scholars and policy leaders and position them to advance careers in public service.”
In other words, Khan’s Center will create the next generation of Lina Khans, activist lawyers and government employees primed to imprint the American economy and society with their worldview. This center at Columbia is an effort to shape the next generation of decision-makers. A recent Wall Street Journal article highlights what a distinct advantage this type of academic effort gives progressives.
Back in the 1980s, the Reagan Revolution got it right. The Reagan administration transformed policy by placing serious scholars inside government, deploying them into agencies like academic special forces. Professors like Milton Friedman, Martin Anderson, Antonin Scalia, Douglas Ginsburg, Frank Easterbrook, Robert Bork, Richard Posner, Jim Miller (FTC) and William Baxter (DOJ) moved into agencies and onto the bench, where they converted ideas into durable doctrine. Recent Republican administrations have too often treated academia with suspicion and, in doing so, have ceded ground where it matters most. The ICFC will help claw that ground back.
Progressives play the long game. Courts have rejected many of their initiatives, but they treat those losses as investments. Each case reframes the debate, shifts expectations, and builds momentum for broader change. Conservatives, by contrast, too often demand immediate wins and abandon strategies that require time to bear fruit.
Meanwhile, the left invests relentlessly in people. It trains students, places them in clerkships and agencies, and builds a deep bench of staff who shape outcomes from within.
The administrative state runs on personnel. Agency heads need staff attorneys, economists, and analysts to drive decisions every day. Think tanks cannot fill this role. They generate ideas, but they do not consistently produce the foot soldiers who carry those ideas into institutions. Yet the conservative movement continues to prioritize think tanks while underinvesting in talent pipelines.
America stands at a turning point in the fight to preserve consumer choice and economic freedom. Federal regulators have expanded their authority under the banner of “consumer protection,” often limiting choice, raising costs, and discouraging innovation. Leaders across banking, insurance, and investment have sometimes supported these policies, reinforcing a system that restricts competition. Regulators who favor this approach have entrenched themselves and resisted reform.
Changing course requires infrastructure. Reformers must produce rigorous empirical research that challenges prevailing assumptions and equips policymakers with credible alternatives. They must also train a new generation of lawyers and policy experts who can enter agencies, shape decisions, and sustain change over time. Without that pipeline, even the best ideas stall.
The ICFC matters. The conservative movement can no longer afford to ignore academia. With disciplined leadership and a clear mission, the ICFC can help build a durable movement that produces ideas, develops talent, and competes where it counts. Supporting it means investing in a future where consumers, not regulators, make the key economic decisions.
