WASHINGTON - s4story -- In the most recent decision holding that judges can boycott law schools by refusing to hire their students as law clerks because of antisemitism on the campus after Hamas' attack on Israel, the Seventh Circuit Judicial Council just dismissed a complaint against one of thirteen judges who joined the boycott of Columbia Law School.

Its decision said very clearly that "a judge may refuse to hire law clerks from a law school or university that has, in the judge's view, failed to foster important aspects of higher education like civility in discourse, respect for freedom of speech, and viewpoint nondiscrimination. Accordingly, the law-clerk hiring boycott is neither inconsistent with the integrity of the judicial office nor likely to diminish public confidence in the judiciary."

Similar complaints were filed against judges in the Fifth Circuit, Eleventh Circuit, and the Court of Federal Claims, but all were dismissed on similar grounds, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

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For example, the Fifth Circuit ruled as follows:

"a refusal to hire a law clerk from a particular university whose students reportedly engaged in unlawful activity or violent acts, without more is not evidence that the judge cannot remain impartial towards attorneys or parties who graduated from that university.

Banzhaf may have helped trigger the trend when somewhat earlier he threatened to punish students at Stanford Law School who, in violation of the school's free speech rules, shouted down and prevented a speech by a federal judge who was an invited speaker.

As a result, several judges announced that they would refuse to hire graduates from law schools which did not respect and enforces guarantees of free speech and respect for the views of others.
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"The permissiveness prompted a heated debate about how best to discipline law schools that won't discipline their own students, and led 14 federal judges, including James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, to announce that they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law." [emphasis added]

Now that the Trump administration is cracking down on schools which allegedly permitted or even encouraged criminal protests - including assaults on other students, defacement of property, and the illegal occupation of campus buildings - Banzhaf hopes that even more judges will be encouraged and emboldened to consider a law school's "respect for freedom of speech" and similar conduct in awarding these very prestigious and highly sought after clerkship positions.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf