My new essay is up at The Hill, recounting Yale Law School’s baffling concession to bullying by two federal appeals court judges -- James Ho and Elizabeth Branch -- who have announced a clerkship boycott of future Yale graduates until the law school improves its treatment of conservative students and speakers. I agree with much of their criticism of Yale, but penalizing future graduates is not the way to resolve complaints against the law school.
Yale’s perplexing invitation to judicial bullies
Ho’s boycott constitutes judicial misconduct, dangling the prospect of clerkships before some students and withholding them from others to coerce Yale’s administrators into changing their practices.
You might think that Yale’s dean, Heather Gerkin, would loudly object to the victimization of her students through an unethical judicial boycott, but only if you don’t understand how law school rankings work.
Far from criticizing Ho and Branch for threatening to depress Yale’s applicant pool, and weaken the career prospects of future students, Gerken has rewarded them with a speaking invitation, presumably to demonstrate Yale’s compliance with their demands.
Ho and Branch were ungracious in return, using their acceptance letter to further condemn Yale’s culture as “among the worst when it comes to legal cancelation,” while adding that the law school’s recent reforms may be “nothing more than parchment promises.”
Ho and Branch should certainly be able to speak without disruption at Yale, or any law school, if invited by a student group, and Yale’s plan for an “ongoing lecture series that models engaging across divides” is a great idea. But it is disappointing to see the dean’s unqualified imprimatur on an event featuring Ho and Branch, which will be counted as a victory for judicial strong-arming.
You can read the entire essay at The Hill.
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