1. Yes, at least on students the law school. Those students tend to have a outsized effect on the legal community. So if you are a harvard law student with conservative leanings and you are looking for mentorship where there are few options you are going to more likely end up studying under someone like Vermeule who is much more extreme than the average conservative. Hence the outsized effect.

2. That question misunderstands the entire point. Do you think there are no conservative students going to those schools. Who are the professors who share their persuasion and are thus more likely to mentor them? Are they more radical or mainstream? You don’t need to be the majority to have a giant ideological effect, even if that effect might only be on a subset of students.