There is nothing, absolutely nothing, legally wrong with Aaron Sibarium’s Washington Free Beacon expose on the reactions of certain Yale law students against their follow students and in conflict with what one would expect from a law student, in general, and a student at as elite a law school at Yale, in particular. After all, what law student would publicly say something like this?
While the intolerance and call for “unrelenting daily confrontation” with people who don’t share her political views would be unsurprising on the usual crazies on the street, would it be wrong to expect better of Yale Law Students? But Aaron names names and quotes the worst and ugliest Yale has to offer. If before it was some ranting among friends and classmates, it’s now part of a permanent record at the Free Beacon.
Orin Kerr challenged the appropriateness of taking law students (are they kids or adults?) and branding them as nutjobs who should never be admitted to practice law no less take up a seat at YLS in perpetuity.
Aaron, this article seems really inappropriate. These are students venting on social media. You're not only naming them, creating a permanent record of it, you're contacting their future employers to make sure they know, and contacting the students for "comment." /1
— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) May 14, 2022
While irresponsible and irate law students caught at their lowest and worst point expressing intolerance and, perhaps, violence toward their classmates is bad enough that it should not be concealed because “they just dumb kids,” I share Orin’s sense that this is inappropriate. Yes, they are law students, and hence putative adults, although no one seriously believes that they’re mature enough to be in control of their impulses.
And this may not be just a transitory breach of propriety, but enough of a perspective on life that they may well engage in harm against fellow YLS students who commit the crime of heresy. Perhaps these expressions of outrage are warning signs that this person should not be an attorney, a judge, a senator, and dog catcher, and without spreading the word, no one will be aware of the damage these “elite” YLS students might do.
But then, maybe these are just dumb angry kids spewing childish nonsense. Maybe they will look back at their reaction, shake their collective heads and mutter, “what was I thinking?”
When Yale Law School exploded with Trap House Gate, it hung one of its students, a FedSoc member, out to dry. It named names. The administration not only abused its authority to coerce a confession, but it expressly threatened the publicly exposed student with the ruin of his future career. So why isn’t turnabout fair play?
The answer is a matter of choosing to be better, worse or the same as those who abuse their power to harm their ideological enemies. YLS was very wrong with its outrageous handling of the Trap House controversy, and if that was wrong, then is it not similarly wrong to taint these by naming them and creating a permanent record of their lunacy?
The question is not, as Orin notes, whether Aaron had the legal right to use images and name names, despite the student doing their best sovcit impression and announcing that they did not authorize the use of names or images. But the reporting took things a step beyond their insipid reaction.
“It’s not time for ‘reform,’” first-year law student Leah Fessler, a onetime New York Times freelancer, wrote on Instagram. “Democratic Institutions won’t save us.” It is unclear how Fessler will apply that view as a legal intern this summer for federal judge Lewis Liman. Judge Liman did not respond to a request for comment.
Reaching out to Judge Liman for comment, and thus making sure that he was both aware of what was said and that others would then know how to reacted to this news, might be good journalism, but it’s exceptionally damaging to a student and puts a judge in a terrible spot.
I can’t condemn Aaron for doing what he did. This is newsworthy. The students have no claim to privacy. And what they wrote is both disturbing and fundamentally inconsistent with what one would expect of any law student, no less a Yale law student. And still, I share Orin’s sense that this has gone too far, been too harmful and that too many young lives have become casualties of the culture war.
As to the title question, a very obvious no. Suffering ( in large quantities for some) is the very thing they need to stimulate the process of growing the fuck up.
But when it comes to hearing about these so-called students and their despicable deeds, I think most of us have definitely…
So-called students?
I have this silly notion that the definition of student includes the actual desire to learn everything you can about the subject of choice and to display a certain amount of humility in the student /teacher, and student /student dynamic, along with other antiquated and archaic ideas I won’t bother mentioning.
Reaching out to Judge Liman is hardly good journalism, and apes the illiberal acts that make cancel culture real and despicable, i.e. threatening someone’s employment. What I wonder is this: how did we get here? How did it become a normal thing that people should be shouted down, ostracized, and fired for heresy? The rot starts earlier on, as does its encouragement.
These “kids” are monsters in wait, sociopaths who have no business near power of any kind — but because of their intolerant ideology, they’re powerfully attracted to it.
Is there a reason you say it’s “hardly good journalism” or you just don’t like it?
It’s activism masquerading as journalism. Of what relevance is the judge’s opinion of his clerk? Are employers supposed to monitor their employees’ behavior at all times? I could see it in certain circumstances, e.g. Buzzy Bavasi’s immediate firing for racist remarks on TV; if you act in a capacity as a representative for a company, your employment is contingent upon good behavior elsewhere. A clerk doesn’t meet that test.
So a neo-Naxi law clerk is perfectly fine?
Reaching out to the judge wasn’t journalism at all, much less good journalism. The WFB article was part news (students at YLS posted some things on social medial) and part unsourced opinion piece (it is terrible to think of the damage these radicals will wreak when they hold jobs in the legal world). Journalists who are reporting news that involves criticism or an allegation of wrongdoing need to contact the subject of that criticism or allegation for comment. This obligation does not extend to opinion writing, because the opinions being expressed are solely the author’s.
Here, the judge was not a subject of the news reported in the article in any way, much less the subject of criticism or an allegation of wrongdoing. The only reason the judge was brought into the article at all was that the author wanted to express an opinion about the damage that the student might do as a judicial intern. The article was criticizing the student, not the judge, and the judge would have no basis to comment, much less a right to comment, on that criticism.
I share your judgment that harm may flow from this kind of reporting, but such harm may be less than what follows without it. For instance, one can wonder if Urooj Rahman would have been better off had somebody called BS on her before she lobbed a Molotov cocktail at a police car. Similarly, Kathy — mother of Chesa– Boudin (as reported in today’s NY Post) seems to have run off the rails because her teachers and family did not respond appropriately to her early excesses. And yes, Judge Liman is placed in a terrible spot, but he (son of Arthur, former Stevens clerk, but Trump appointee) might be one of the few people who, bridging left and right, can talk sense to these law students and have them listen.
Thanks for explaining that Kathy was Chesa’s mom, but not sure that anyone can talk sense to anyone who wallows at the radical fringe at the moment. Not even Arthur’s boy.
There are ways to report without trying to harm people, for example using only first names in the article.
Broadcasting her full name and contacting her prospective employer is an attempt to brand her and get her fired.
So the reporting may be necessary, but the manner in which it was done may still be reprehensible.
not explaining, just mentioning, to echo the idea that sins might be visited on subsequent generations (hopefully only the second, and not the third and fourth). Staving off harm now might therefore have an even bigger effect than it first seems .
Woosh.
“Swish” would be more like it
If you say so.
In the case of law clerks, it is a service to the bench at this point to let judges know their selected clerk has fallen prey to passionate nut-jobbery. It is a greater service than ever since leaking opinion drafts have become a thing. It doesn’t seem to be possible anymore for young people to put their personal views aside when they sit down to work at a government desk. Maybe this will not be a problem for work in some of the executive agencies, but it makes them an inordinate risk for jobs in the judicial system.
These “kids” are at a minimum, 21 years old before entering law school. In anyone’s book, that’s an adult with adult consequences for being stupid.
These “kid’s” parents and teachers failed them miserably.
As far as the student being named and shamed, go to the college bookstore for a tough shit ticket. She/he/xir wouldn’t have any qualms at all about throwing names out in the public sphere if the shoe was on the other foot. I guess they don’t like playing by their own rules.
One of my tentacular offspring had a bad habit of sneaking up on and scaring another of my tentacular offspring. After much remonstration, what finally resolved the situation was to sneak up on and scare the snot out of the offender. The sibling scaring stopped immediately. Took a few weeks before the aforementioned tentacular offspring realized the wrongness of those aforementioned acts, and incorporated that knowledge into her conscience, but the other sibling just let it be.
So I’m not upset at Aaron Sibarium’s exposé, especially the part about asking for a statement from judge about his clerk-to-be. Maybe Judge Limon will take the opportunity to have a discussion about acceptable norms with Ms. Fessler, and maybe Ms. Fessler will listen, and take this opportunity to grow up. Better now than later. If she doesn’t…then we all know to avoid her like the plague.
The Golden Sir
@screaminbutcalm
Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!
Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
6:14 AM · Mar 13, 2019·Twitter for iPhone
The first rule of cancel culture: It’s only canceling when it’s happening to my team.
Not my first rule of cancel culture, Jake. I can’t be responsible for lazy or biased folx.
Some of the main objections to cancel culture is that the people being cancelled don’t deserve it; that the cancellers are leveraging over-strength consequences to get what they want; and that it generally deters good acts.
As such I’m generally opposed to cancel culture. But here the article is
-Properly targeted (it talks about specific people who did a specific thing, rather than trying to smear people based on group membership and identity); and
-Aimed specifically at people who are themselves engaged in attempts to cancel and harass others.
I don’t think it was appropriate to call their bosses. But the rest of the article seems OK.