In reaction to the Duncan debacle at Stanford, Judges Ho and Branch have announced that they are adding Stanford law school to the “do not hire” list.
James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, the circuit court judges who announced last year that they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, are adding Stanford to the boycott.
“We will not hire any student who chooses to attend Stanford Law School in the future,” Ho, who sits on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, said Saturday evening in a speech to the Texas Review of Law and Politics, a transcript of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The clerkship moratorium, like the one on Yale, will exempt current law students.
The issue isn’t whether they will choose to hire or not to hire students from those schools. They can choose not to hire students from any school they like. The issue is whether publicly announcing it in order to urge other judges to do the same, and to use their clout as federal judges to influence schools to be less accommodating of students who behave this way toward judges, in particular, or speakers, in general, with whom they disagree, is improper.
“Imagine that every judge who says they’re opposed to discrimination at Yale and Stanford takes the same path,” Ho said. “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?”
While some lawprofs of extremely dubious competence have come out in support for DEI dean Tirien Steinbach, these are judges using their offices and their hiring practices to influence speech and law schools. There’s a difference.
https://twitter.com/SIfill_/status/1642613981742350336
Are Judges Ho and Branch right to use their offices for this purpose? Are they right to publicly announce that they’re doing so, and imploring other judges to do the same? As noted, they are public officials, and the clerks they hire will be public employees paid with public monies. But then these are clerks, exempt positions left entirely to the judges’ discretion. Is this a proper exercise of discretion or an abuse?
The question is not whether you find the conduct of the students at Stanford acceptable or reprehensible. The question is solely about whether these judges’ reactions to it are a permissible use of their good offices to influence, or perhaps manipulate, law schools into ending their acquiescence in the silencing and deplatforming of conservative judges and speakers.
*Tuesday Talk rules apply, within reason.
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We are at war internally. To pretend otherwise is foolish. The intent of the ‘Woke’ is to monopolize all acceptable thought and all the good jobs.
Play Fascist Games, Win Fascist Prizes!
If only you grasped the irony.
Actually I do.
[Ed. Note: We use words here, not emojis.]
It ends up hitting students who had nothing to do with the ugly incident, simply because of their bad judgment in selecting a law school. The students I wouldn’t hire would be the ones who participated. I don’t see how anyone could risk letting one of them actually talk to a client.
State bar assoctions not admitting students for actions that would violate the rules of lawyer conduct seems a more appropriate sanction. If the behavior we saw at Stanford results in being denied admission to a state bar then the behavior will stop.
In the jurisdiction where I practice, there are signs on all the lawyer tables that read, “Civility and decorum are expected. Nothing less will be tolerated.” Those signs have been there before I began practicing here which was over 20 years ago.
My colleagues and I throughout our state have all noticed that the attorneys now entering practice leave a lot to be desired in the category of appropriate behavior. More to the point is the thought, “You’re a criminal trial lawyer. If you don’t have the intestinal fortitude for the pressure that comes with what is at stake then go write wills.”
Having written that, there is a marked difference between what is acceptable in South Florida (generally defined as Dade County and to a lesser degree Broward and Palm Beach) and North Florida. During the Covid lockdowns when all appearances were made by Zoom, a number of South Florida lawyers took cases here. The judiciary quickly made them aware that what was acceptable there would not be tolerated in North Florida.
Since you’re new here, you should be aware that war stories are frowned upon. Most people here are lawyers and judges, many with far greater experience than you, and they really aren’t interested in reading about you and your experiences.
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Weren’t you taught in trial practice “To paint a picture” for the jury?
Describing scenarios (which admittedly is probably the Golden Rule) into which people can insert themselves I’ve found is an effective way to communicate with people who are not nuanced as to the rules of procedure which as you know is where we make our money.
Finally, from reading the posts here for the a few weeks before deciding to participate, you could of fooled me that most people posting here are lawyers and judges. The tone here is one of political partisans fighting for their side even though everything posted is purely opinion.
Well, your world; your laws of physics.
Enjoy your day.
It’s a rookie mistake to confuse the handful of regular commenters with the thousands of people who read SJ daily. Try a little humility. Believe me, we’ve been through n00bs like you a thousand times before who show up and act as if they get to do as they please. It never turns out well for them.
I quote our host, Mr. Greenfield, “If only you grasped the irony.”
Under normal circumstances, someone who started breaking windows at the University library would be a vandal, and the police would arrest him. If the library was on fire, and people were trapped inside, the same behavior would be hailed as heroism.
Are Ho and Branch vandals or heroes? It depends on which side of the narrative you believe. Is the University being burned down, or is it being repaired and improved?
Forgive me for being an uneducated blue collar worker, but how is what these two judges are doing different than when President Biden said his Supreme Court nominee was going to be a black female? Both parties are announcing their intent not to consider possibly viable candidates based solely upon certain characteristics.
One is a president appointing a person to the Supreme Court, the other is two judges saying they won’t hire students from certain law schools. The president is not a judge, and a spot on the supreme court is not a clerkship.
Seems the same to me, but then I lack a Sense of Irony.
“If at first you don’t succeed, try try again” isn’t always the best advice. And to immediately demonstrate why, I’ll try again. One is what our Host wrote about, the other he did not write about. Hope that helps.
Fair enough.
A gov’t official ruling out certain schools seems bogus on its face, but as I am also uneducated with respect to law professions here, can you help me understand the importance of a clerkship to a career in law? It’s obviously prestigious, it obviously helps build networks and reputations and presumably teaches much to the student, but what percentage of well-respected lawyers or judges never had a clerkship?
Is not hiring for a clerkship anywhere near the virtual prohibition on nominating only Yale and Harvard grads for the Supreme Court?
——
Apologies in advance to Scott, I think my username here has changed wrt my email, sigh, the twitter name I was commenting under became quite attacked by the twitter algorithms and I’ve abandoned it and am trying to use a nym far closer to my actual name…
No, I can’t help you understand. I hate numbers and have no idea on the percentage, let alone what “well-respected” means. The third question is unintelligible, even if I were inclined to help.
It’s an abuse of discretion to deny students the chance at clerkships merely because they chose to attend Stanford or Yale. It’s a strange prejudgment on kids who choose a prestigious school whether that choice is a good one or not. Taking each individual on their own merits ought to be expected of a judge. Are the applicants to each of these schools expected to know in advance either about the moratorium or the basis for it?
It’s another abuse of discretion to announce that decision and attempt to influence other judges to do the same. Oddly, I can understand a private and unspoken ban on certain law students more than the pronounced version here. The ban would still be wrong, but it doesn’t have the same potential impact as does what the judges did by expressing it as good policy.
Theirs are high offices and the life-appointees should try to stay above the fray.
In my opinion, boycotts are a morally acceptable and an objectively effective way to drive change. Unless, of course, the person using the boycott has expressed displeasure when the strategy is used against groups they favor. Then it’s hypocrisy. I have no idea what these judges think of boycotts so I’m not qualified to say if they are wrong.
Imagine you were appealing a criminal conviction to an appellate court. And imagine a judge on that court had advocated collective punishment (in this case of Stanford Law School students for the sins of their deans.) How confident would you be in their judgement being fair?
That said, its hard to imagine a convict wanting an Appeal to go to the 5th Circuit in any case!