Federal judges will not hire Stanford Law students for clerks after abuse of conservative judge

Two Trump-appointed federal judges have vowed to no longer hire law clerks from Stanford Law School because of what happened last month to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan.

As previously reported, last month Stanford Law School’s chapter of the Federalist Society invited Duncan to speak at their campus. In response, student activists protested loudly and obnoxiously, disrupting the event.

And they did so with the veritable backing of a dean:

The disruptive behavior was not appreciated by Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho and Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Elizabeth Branch, both of whom were nominated to their posts by former President Donald Trump.

Responding to what happened at Stanford, the duo dropped a joint column for National Review mid-last month in which they called for universities to apply more consequences for disruptive students.

“Schools issue grades and graduation honors to help employers separate wheat from chaff. Likewise, schools should inform employers if they’re injecting potentially disruptive forces into their organizations,” they wrote.

They added that unless schools do apply consequences, they’ll have no choice but to do something they’d started doing the prior fall, which is stop hiring from universities associated with disruptive students.

“Otherwise, more and more employers may start to reach the same conclusion that we did last fall — that we have no choice but to stop hiring from these schools in the future,” they wrote.

“At the end of the day, that may be the only way to send a message that will resonate with law schools — judges and other employers imposing consequences on law schools who refuse to impose consequences on their own. No one is required to hire students who aren’t taught to live under the rule of law,” they added.

Now fast-forward to Saturday, April 1st, when Ho delivered a speech at a Texas Review of Law and Politics event in which he doubled down on his and Branch’s belief that universities need to apply more consequences.

“Rules aren’t rules without consequences. … And students who practice intolerance don’t belong in the legal profession,” he said, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

He continued by calling what happened at Stanford Law School an act of “intellectual terrorism.”

“[W]hat some law schools tolerate and even encourage today is not intellectual exploration—but intellectual terrorism. Students don’t try to engage and learn from one another. They engage in disruption, intimidation, and public shaming. They try to terrorize people into submission and self-censorship, in a deliberate campaign to eradicate certain viewpoints from the public discourse,” he said.

“And they’re doing it to accomplished litigators, legal scholars, even federal judges. Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, as well as the Fifth Circuit, have been disrupted while trying to speak on campus,” he added.

Ho further argued that the treatment Duncan faced is endemic of the “rampant” viewpoint discrimination at such schools — and that this is the key problem.

“The real problem in the academy is not disruption—but discrimination. Rampant, blatant discrimination against disfavored viewpoints. Against students, faculty, and anyone else who dares to voice a view that may be mainstream across America—but contrary to the views of cultural elites,” Ho said.

“Moreover, let’s just say it: The viewpoint discrimination we most often see in the academy today is discrimination against religious conservatives. Just look at which viewpoints are targeted most frequently at speaker events—and excluded most vigorously from faculty appointments,” he added.

Ho continued by stressing that unless the discrimination itself is addressed, the root problem will remain — ergo why he and Branch (“Lisa”) have taken the step of adding Stanford Law to their list of boycotted universities.

“Unless we take action to solve the real problem—discrimination, not disruption—all we’re doing is giving speeches. … So what do we do about it? Well, ask yourself this: What do elite law schools do when they conclude that institutions are failing them? Yale recently called for a boycott of the U.S. News and World Report. And numerous schools have followed suit,”  he said.

“Well, imagine that every judge who says they’re opposed to discrimination at Yale and Stanford takes the same path. Imagine they decide that, until the discrimination stops, they will no longer hire from those schools in the future. How quickly do we think those schools would stop discriminating then? So Lisa and I have made a decision. We will not hire any student who chooses to attend Stanford Law School in the future,” he added.

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