Thirteen judges say ‘no’ to Yale law grads By Monica Showalter
Toxic school, toxic graduates.
Instead of learning how to behave professionally as lawyers at Yale law school, the storied and prestigious school, possibly the most prestigious in the country, has become a haven for wokester intolerance of the most infantile sort. Speakers are shouted down instead of debated through the ace legal reasoning they’re supposed to teach over there,dissidents are “canceled” and the radical student body in this atmosphere is making a noisy spectacle of itself.
It’s gotten so bad that judges are saying to themselves they want no part of this — and the rot is so deep the entire school is considered hopelessly tainted. Not surprisingly, Yale is now increasingly seeing its grads treated like pariahs by real-world judges. The tally of judges who have stated they will no longer hire Yale graduates as clerks is now 13.
According to legal blog Behind The Black (hat tip: Instapundit):
Following the public announcement by Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that he would no longer hire Yale graduates as law clerks because of that school’s enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship, it appears that a dozen other judges have joined his boycott as well.
“Students should be mindful that they will face diminished opportunities if they go to Yale,” said a prominent circuit court judge, whose clerks have gone on to nab Supreme Court clerkships. “I have no confidence that they’re being taught anything.”
With one exception, the judges made clear this is a policy they are imposing on future—not current—Yale Law School students.
Ho’s public speech was even more harsh.
“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. …”
The blog notes the long litany of cancel-culture antics practiced in this legal playpen:
In 2015 students demanded the firing of two administrators because each had defended the idea of free speech. In 2016 students demanded that Yale stop teaching English literature.
These events were only preliminaries to the complete takeover of the blacklist culture in 2021. In February 2021 students and professors at the college pushed a petition to revoke the degrees of all well known Republicans. That same spring law school administrators threatened two students with blackballing if they didn’t write false complaints against a teacher those administrators wanted to get rid of. Then, in October 2021 the school administration attacked a student for something he had written as well as his membership in The Federalist Society.
This was followed in March 2022 by a mob of more than 100 Yale law students attempting to shut down a panel on civil liberties, with the school’s administrator refusing to take any action.
Which signals a pretty nasty, intolerant place.
Meanwhile, these grads go on to the fanciest clerkships and internships in the legal world, including serving as clerks to Supreme Court justices, and after that, take bigtime prestigious positions in fancy law firms, government office, and the administrative state. In short, they go on to be “our rulers” over other law school grads who may be just as smart, but don’t have that Yale imprimatur.
It’s quite amazing, in fact, how much of the country has been shut out from its own governance based on not having those ivy league degrees.
Now that they are rolling in like tantrum-y toddlers and screaming teenagers to those prestigious positions, there’s obviously an embarassment factor — law school grads who can’t use legal reasoning, law school grads who, like hothouse flowers, can’t flourish in atmospheres of diverse opinions and points of view, and law school grads who exhibit the utmost in unprofessional behavior, not even being able to keep their disgust to themselves, one judge said ‘no’ — and a string of other judges followed him. Those, by the way, are the ones who have declared this intention — for every judge who has, there are likely many more who haven’t yet who simply won’t give these applicants the time of day. They just don’t say so.
A decision like this is sure to affect students’ willingness to go to Yale, as opposed to say, Harvard or Columbia, woke places to be sure, but where fewer crazed antics are the rule and no such singling out has taken place. And that is going to sting because for many students, the piece of paper, the diploma, is what matters, not the legal prowess. If the paper isn’t opening doors, and in fact is shutting them, Yale law grads are bound to start looking like pariahs.
Maybe that’s a good comeuppance for them and will snap them into some sense of professionalism. Call it checks and balances. The judges who’ve declared ‘basta’ to punk behavior at law school are performing a public service.
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