Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit announced Thursday that he would no longer be hiring law clerks from Yale Law School and urged other judges to follow suit. In a keynote address to the Kentucky Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society, titled “Agreeing to Disagree — Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture,” Ho cited a number of high-profile examples of speakers being shouted down or otherwise censored at law schools across the country but singled out Yale Law as “one particular law school where cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.”
“Yale not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it,” Ho said, according to prepared remarks exclusively obtained by National Review. “Starting today, I will no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School. And I hope that other judges will join me as well.”
Ho has made waves in the past for his outspoken criticisms of left-wing campus culture. In February, in the wake of Georgetown Law’s suspension of Ilya Shapiro, the judge surprised the audience at a Federalist Society–organized event on Georgetown Law’s campus by giving a resounding defense of Shapiro during a speech that was initially intended to be about originalism. At the time, Ho acknowledged that he “was scheduled to talk” about originalism but said he’d “decided . . . to spend my time today talking about Ilya Shapiro.” In those remarks, which garnered significant public attention, Ho delivered blistering criticism of the campus attitudes that had led to Shapiro’s ouster, arguing that “cancel culture is not just antithetical to our constitutional culture and our American culture,” but “to the very legal system that each of you seeks to join,” and declared: “If Ilya Shapiro is deserving of cancellation, then you should go ahead and cancel me too.”
Ho’s half-hour address to the Kentucky Federalist Society conference sounded similar notes, arguing that “all too often, law schools appear to be run by the mob — whether out of sympathy or spinelessness.” (“Colleges aren’t teaching students how to agree to disagree,” he said. “They’re teaching students how to destroy. And then they’re launching them into the world.”) He cited numerous examples, including Shapiro’s suspension at Georgetown, the shouting-down of law professor and author Josh Blackman at City University of New York School of Law in 2018, and the “similar dynamics during law school talks” faced by “Judges David Stras and Patrick Bumatay of the Eighth and Ninth Circuits.”
The bigger problem, Ho worried, was that “our whole country has now become a campus.” With academic trends trickling out into mainstream American society, he argued,
cancel culture now plagues a wide variety of institutions. I’ve written judicial opinions noting how
Cancel culture has infected our educational institutions, the legal profession, corporate America, and public health — and how even the criminal justice system has been weaponized to cancel disfavored political viewpoints. Cancel culture is also deeply embedded in journalism, entertainment, sports, and the arts.
The consequences for America are significant. I would contend that cancel culture is one of the leading reasons why citizens no longer trust a wide variety of once-leading institutions. It turns out that, when elite institutions make clear that people who think like you and me shouldn’t even exist, we return the favor.
After discussing the various examples of attempts to silence dissident voices on law-school campuses across the country, Ho zeroed in on the specific instances of cancel culture at Yale Law. Judge Bill Pryor “was disrupted by loud angry law students in the classroom”; “Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom and Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association” faced a disruption that “became so intense” the police officers present at the event “had to call for backup” and “escort the panelists out of the building and into a squad car,” while the associate dean, who “was present throughout the entire event, . . . did nothing”; and “Yale administrators threatened to destroy” the career of “a law student [who] sent an invitation for a party that referred to his apartment as a ‘trap house’” if the student “didn’t apologize,” telling “him his membership in the Federalist Society was ‘very triggering for students.’”
“It turns out that, when elite law schools like Yale teach their students that there are no consequences to their intolerance and illiberalism,” Ho said, “the message sticks with them.”
The first way to fight back against these trends, Ho argued, is “to speak out against cancel culture as citizens. We can stand up for free speech, for open and rigorous debate, and for tolerance of opposing viewpoints.” But that alone isn’t enough: “We’re not just citizens. We’re also customers. Customers can boycott entities that practice cancel culture. . . . I wonder how a law school would feel, if my fellow federal judges and I stopped being its customers. Instead of millions of customers, there are only 179 authorized federal circuit judgeships, and 677 authorized federal district judgeships.”
Refusing to hire law clerks from Yale would strike at the heart of the illiberal culture in the nation’s premier legal institutions, Ho argued: “Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education. Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.” The school “sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large. I certainly reserve the right to add other schools in the future. But my sincere hope is that I won’t have to. My sincere hope is that, if nothing else, my colleagues and I will at least send the message that other schools should not follow in Yale’s footsteps.”
Ho’s message to law schools was clear: “If they want the closed and intolerant environment that Yale embraces today, that’s their call. But I want nothing to do with it.”
Reporting from National Review.
