Two federal judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, both Appointed by the previous president Donald Trump announced that they will no longer be hiring legal clerks from Stanford Law School.
The boycott came in response to the mistreatment of a fellow judge during a recent visit to the California school.
Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch previously announced a similar boycott of Yale Law School last year, after a series of free speech incidents in which they complained about the school’s “cancel culture” approach.
Boycotts will only apply to future students and not students currently enrolled as law students at the school.
“We will not hire any student who chooses to attend Stanford Law School in the future,” Hu said during a speech to the Texas Law and Policy Review.
The Yale and Stanford law schools are among the most prestigious in the country, having produced many notable leaders, including presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, at least five current members of the US Senate, and four current justices of the Supreme Court.
U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho announced that he will no longer be hiring law clerks from Stanford Law School and Yale Law School
Joining the Hugh boycott of Stanford and Yale was fellow Donald Trump appointee Judge J. Elizabeth Branch
Hu described the treatment of Fifth Circuit Appeals Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan as “intellectual terrorism”.
Hundreds of students yelled at Duncan and berated him for the religion of diversity at Stanford University Terrien Steinbach during his law school visit last month.
Students called him “scum,” asked him why he couldn’t “find sex,” and exclaimed, “We hope your daughters get raped.”
Steinbach is currently on sabbatical and has been dismissed from Stanford for disciplining reviewers, who by the school’s own admission have violated its free speech policy.
Posters on the walls of Duncan’s prestigious university have welcomed him – saying he committed crimes against women, gays, blacks and “transgender people” in reference to a case.
He was asked to give a speech at the famous law school earlier in March about the Circuit Court of Appeals by the student chapter of the Federal Conservative Assembly, but was met with abuse.
Fifth Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, 51, who was also appointed by Donald Trump, was asked to give a speech at Stanford Law School last month but was met with abuse.
Fifth Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan eventually asked to be in charge when the harassment wouldn’t stop, and he stepped in as Associate Dean for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Terrien Steinbach
Assistant Dean Steinbach intervened while shouting, but instead of calming the students down, she began giving Judge Duncan a six-minute lecture using prepared notes.
Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Teren Steinbach is now on leave from the prestigious university
Dean Steinbach’s assistant intervened during the shouting, but instead of calming the students down, she began by giving a six-minute pious lecture to Judge Duncan using prepared notes.
The dean of the law school, Jenny Martinez, and the president of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Loving, have since apologized, asserting that the protesters and officials violated Stanford policy days later.
In his speech, Hu argued that Duncan’s treatment reflected “rampant” discrimination in viewpoint at elite law schools, some of which do not employ a single right-of-centre professor.
“Rules are not rules without consequences,” Hu said. “And students who practice intolerance do not belong to the legal profession.”
He implied that a more politically diverse faculty and less ideologically consistent administration would go a long way toward lifting the boycott.
“How do we know that everyone’s opinions will be protected, if everyone’s opinions are not represented?” Hu asked.
“What some law schools tolerate and even encourage today is not intellectual exploration – but intellectual terrorism,” Ho suggested.
Students do not try to engage and learn from each other. They engage in disorder, intimidation, and public shaming. They attempt to terrorize people into submission and self-censorship, in a deliberate campaign to eliminate certain views from public discourse.
Law schools like to say that they are training the next generation of leaders. But schools don’t even teach students how to be good citizens – let alone good lawyers. We do not study the basic terms of our democracy.
The announcement is the latest and greatest effort to hold Stanford accountable for its treatment of Duncan, and he hopes his colleagues will follow suit.
In a later interview following the Standford incident, Justice Duncan said the whole debacle was an embarrassment that made him fear for the future of the country.
Judge Ho had previously criticized the wake-up culture at Yale and is now targeting Stanford
He urged his fellow justices to boycott the Ivy League establishments, which have produced many Supreme Court justices
This is one of the best law schools in the world. Students are the cream of the crop. Future judges, senators, presidents, and industry leaders.
Yet this is a group of the best and brightest, yelling at a federal judge who has been invited to campus and thus shows they have no hazy understanding of the basic concept of legal discourse: You have to meet logic with reason. Instead, their operating principle is: If I don’t like what you say or think, I will shut you up.
Duncan said, “Unless these students undergo a radical change in their whole approach to controversy and contention, they are unfit to be members of any union.”
He said he sympathized with the other students who had gathered to hear him speak, but had missed the opportunity.
The attack was personal and downright disgusting. If I spoke to a dog the way these students talk to me, I would feel ashamed.
Since announcing the boycott of Yale Law School, he and Branch have been two of 14 federal judges who have boycotted the school over a series of high-profile free speech scandals.
The boycott appears to be having an effect, with students and faculty urging Ho not to hold back and citing an improved campus climate.
“Imagine that every judge who says they oppose discrimination at Yale and Stanford is going down the same path,” Ho said. Imagine that they decide, until the discrimination stops, that they will not recruit from those schools in the future. How quickly do we think these schools will stop discriminatory after that?
The justices hope that their district will convince their colleagues to follow suit, and that schools like Yale and Stanford will address their problems with discrimination in order to restore their prestige and reputation as top law schools.
