Why Are There So Many Lawyers in Congress?

• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Author: Adam Bonica
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12265

253

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 45, 2, May 2020

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12265

ADAM BONICA

Stanford University

Why Are There So Many Lawyers in

Congress?

Scholars have long sought to explain the overrepresentation of lawyers

in Congress. This article draws on a wealth of data to explore the causes and

consequences of this representational imbalance. While lawyers enter politics at

higher rates, self-selection at best provides a partial explanation. Conditional on

running, lawyers win at twice the rate of candidates from other backgrounds.

Contrary to prevailing theories in the literature, voters do not reward candidates

with backgrounds in law. Rather, lawyers win because of a sizable competitive

advantage in early fundraising, owing in large part to their professional networks.

This study has important implications for who runs for office, who wins, and

the demographic composition of Congress. It also identifies an underexplored

mechanism by which the US system of campaign finance sustains deep represen-

tational imbalances.

In reflecting on the role of lawyers in the early American

Republic, Alexis De Tocqueville famously referred to the legal

profession, comprised of the bench and the bar, as the “American

Aristocracy” (de Tocqueville 1840). Nearly two centuries later, law-

yers continue to dominate American politics. In addition to staff-

ing an entire branch of government, lawyers are well represented

in elected office. While comprising a mere 0.4% of the voting-age

population, lawyers accounted for 39% of seats in the House and

56% of seats in the Senate in the 115th Congress. The overrep-

resentation of lawyers vastly exceeds even that of millionaires.

Relative to the average citizen, millionaires are approximately 10

times more likely to be elected to Congress.1

Lawyers, by compari-

son, are nearly 100 times more likely to be elected to Congress.

The implications of concentrating political power in the

hands of a single profession were not lost on Tocqueville. Lawyers

as a group have shared interests, incentives, and concerns, which,

in turn, shape their political outlook and understanding of policy.

Along these lines, contemporary legal scholars have argued that the

legal profession’s unique relationship with politics has benefited

© 2020 Washington University in St. Louis

254 Adam Bonica

lawyers both economically and politically (Hadfield 2000, 2008;

Posner 1993). Such claims are consistent with evidence that voca-

tional background can influence the attitudes and choices of legis-

lators (Carnes 2012, 2013; Matter and Stutzer 2015). Lawyers have

also influenced the organization and inner workings of Congress.

Miller (1995) documents the various ways lawyers have shaped the

rules, procedures, and cultural norms of Congress, often to their

advantage.

The overrepresentation of lawyers speaks to what is perhaps

the fundamental question in the study of democratic representa-

tion: Why are some segments of society so much better represented

than others? Accounting for the electoral success of lawyers offers

insights into what it takes to run for office successfully, the barriers

to entry and how they are overcome, and what makes some individ-

uals better positioned than others to navigate the electoral process.

There is no shortage of theories on why so many lawyers are

elected to Congress. In his book The High Priests of American

Politics, Miller (1995) compiles an impressive compendium

of claims and hypotheses put forth over the years by 94 differ-

ent scholars. Most of these explanations focus either on (1) how

a heightened interest in politics combined with career incentives

specific to the legal profession make lawyers more likely to pursue

careers in politics or (2) how certain traits or skills associated with

lawyers might appeal to voters or otherwise make for capable can-

didates. However, lacking data to test these claims, scholars have

been left to speculate which, if any, hold weight.

The study leverages a new data set on the educational and

professional backgrounds of thousands of congressional can-

didates to empirically test several key claims and hypotheses ad-

vanced in the literature. In covering the candidate population more

broadly, the dataset enables a systematic accounting of rates of

entry into the candidate pool and electoral success by profession

and educational background. In line with past accounts, I find that

even when compared to similarly high-status professions, lawyers

are more likely to run for political office. While important, lawyers

running at higher rates is only part of the story. Conditional on

running for office, lawyers enjoy much higher rates of electoral

success than candidates from other backgrounds—but not for the

reasons typically offered by scholars. Lawyers are neither held in

high esteem by voters nor do their skills offer a distinct advan-

tage when campaigning. Rather, their competitive advantage lies

in their strength as early fundraisers.

255Why Are There So Many Lawyers in Congress?

The early fundraising advantage is sizable. Lawyers running

as nonincumbents fundraise at twice the rate as candidates from

other backgrounds during the initial months of their campaigns,

generating crucial resources and momentum heading into the pri-

maries. Their success as early fundraisers owes in large part to

money raised from other lawyers. Combined with evidence that

primary elections are especially sensitive to early fundraising out-

comes, this suggests that professional networks are instrumental

to winning elections. It also identifies a key mechanism by which

the US system of campaign finance sustains deep representational

imbalances.

Lawyer-Legislators in Comparative Perspective

Congress has historically been a legislative body dominated

by lawyer-legislators.2

As a result, the prevalence of lawyers in

Congress is often assumed to be a natural consequence of the spe-

cial relationship between law and politics (e.g., Eulau and Sprague

1964). This, of course, implies that lawyers should be similarly

well represented in legislatures around the world. Using data on

the professional and educational backgrounds of members of na-

tional legislatures collected from the Inter-Parliamentary Union

Chronicle of Parliamentary Elections, I calculated the propor-

tion of members with backgrounds in law for 25 OECD member

nations.

As Figure 1 shows, there is substantial cross-national varia-

tion in lawyers as a share of the population and national legisla-

tures. There is a clear relationship between the numbers of lawyers

per capita and seat shares held by lawyers in national legislatures.3

Even so, the UnitedStates is an outlier, with over twice as many

lawyer-legislators as predicted by the fitted line. By comparison,

lawyer-legislators account for just 13% of the UK Parliament.

The percentages are similar for other nations that inherited the

English Commonwealth system of law. Canada, New Zealand,

and Australia are at 15%, 14%, and 13%, respectively. The percent-

ages for France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Japan

are much lower, ranging from 2% to 6%.

Figure 1 shows that a lawyer-dominated legislature is not an

inherent feature of representative democracies. Neither is it in-

nocuous. A later section documents ways lawyers have influenced

important political outcomes in their favor.