Earlier this afternoon, our own Nate Hochman delivered the scoop that Judge James C. Ho of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit would no longer consider graduates of Yale Law School for law-clerkship positions.
Speaking before the Federalist Society’s Kentucky Chapters Conference, Ho lamented cancel culture as a phenomenon, arguing that it “plagues a wide variety of institutions” and “is one of the leading reasons why citizens no longer trust a wide variety of once-leading institutions.”
The judge declared that he will “no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School” because “Yale not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it.” He’s not wrong. Students at Yale Law disrupt events featuring conservative guest speakers. Administrators coerced an apology out of a student for using the term “trap house” in a party invite. It is, without a doubt, an illiberal institution with a prejudice against conservatives on its campus.
So why is Judge Ho’s solution to further punish those same conservatives? He’s already explained the theory behind the protest:
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.
The idea is that if talented young prospective law students know they will be blackballed if Yale appears on their résumés, they will not apply to or attend it. But that seems pretty far downstream from the here and now, and that’s only if Judge Ho’s newly recommended practice takes hold throughout the judiciary.
The only consequence we know Judge Ho’s declaration will have is that Yale graduates’ applications will be thrown out, and that’s a shame. Maybe only a few, or just one, or no Yale graduates will suffer as a result. If Ho gets his wish, it’ll be a lot more.
Perhaps, though, it’s worth considering in the abstract whether a federal judge using the blameless as pawns in an effort to change the behavior of an institution to which they are connected — but whose malfeasance they are not responsible for — is a practice that conservatives should endorse. Circumstances can be bad enough to warrant unusual courses of action, but it’s worth ensuring that the remedy is both necessary and effective.
Moreover, once you’ve deemed a measure such as collective punishment an appropriate tactic, you’re more likely to return to it — and more compromising tactics still — in future instances. How many of your own principles should you be willing to forget until the mission is accomplished? Will you be able to remember them once/if it has been?
Conservatives should and must seek to change the culture at Yale and other institutions of higher learning, but at first glance, Ho’s means appear to send us down a long road toward a dubious solution that will punish innocent people in the interim.