Montana’s attorney general, Austin Knudsen, deserves credit for calling out law students who shout down speakers and recommending that their misconduct be counted against them in their applications for admission to the state bar. Last week, he made that recommendation in a letter to the chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court, the body that has regulatory authority over the bar.

The March incident at Stanford Law School in which Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was shouted down at a lunchtime event is still fresh in memory. Students hurled vile invective at the jurist as he attempted to speak, and a dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion who was present fueled the protest with her own rambling tirade. Knudsen recounted this episode and its aftermath, in which even after “Stanford’s Dean finally apologized to Judge Duncan, students at the school turned their harassment against her.”

That, of course, “is only the most recent example of a troubling trend” in which “[t]he disruption of speaking events is fast becoming the norm at law schools.” That means the suppression of “the only diversity of viewpoints that students will see before graduating” in the ideological monolith that is legal academia. The trend also “sends a terrible message to these future lawyers,” teaching them “to shortcut the marketplace of ideas” by “exercis[ing] a heckler’s veto over disfavored speech.” Moreover, since “virtually every law school in the country hires professors from the schools that allow this behavior,” we face the “scary” prospect “that the same idealogues who disrupted Judge Duncan might one day teach law students at the University of Montana.” Of course, judges including those on the state supreme court would never tolerate those who would heckle an advocate making an argument in their courtroom. “Conduct that would constitute contempt of court cannot be acceptable in the academic setting for those aspiring to join the legal profession.”

Knudsen requested that the court clarify in its materials for law students and others seeking to join the bar “that students’ conduct in law school—including conduct at speaker events and similar occasions where a range of perspectives are presented on key issues—is relevant to an evaluation of their character and fitness for admission to the bar.” Additionally,

As part of conducting evaluations of character and fitness on the part of applicants for bar admission, include as an express element of that evaluation whether a student has demonstrated respect or hostility toward free, open, and civil debate on campus, including their participation in conduct such as that recently seen at Stanford Law School, with consequences to include delaying or rejecting applications and requiring remedial education in professional conduct responsibilities.

Hopefully, Montana’s supreme court will take its attorney general’s advice, and hopefully other states will adopt similar standards for bar admissions. Knudsen has taken a stand for the rule of law, which cannot be expected to last if the next generation of attorneys can disrespect it with impunity.