Two of the federal judges boycotting Yale Law School over its poor record
on free speech will speak at the university next week about their decision
not to hire clerks from the Ivy League law school, according to
promotional materials for the event reviewed by the Washington Free
Beacon.

The event, hosted by the William F. Buckley program and set for Nov. 30,
will feature Fifth Circuit judge James Ho and Eleventh Circuit judge
Elizabeth Branch, who over the past two months announced that they would
no longer hire clerks from the school. The Buckley program is independent
of the university, and the law school is not sponsoring the event.

Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken has also invited Ho and Branch to
speak at the law school in January, a move widely seen as damage control.
That event still appears to be in the works, though the law school did not
respond to a request for comment.

Next week�s panel comes after a dozen federal judges in addition to Ho and
Branch told the Free Beacon they would no longer hire clerks from Yale
Law, citing the law school administration�s response to several campus
uproars, including its now-infamous intimidation of Trent Colbert, a
second-year law student who used the term "traphouse" in an email. They
also pointed to administrators� failure to discipline students who
disrupted a bipartisan panel on civil liberties and caused so much chaos
the police were called.

The boycott prompted Gerken to outline a series of steps she says the law
school is taking to protect free speech, including the hire of a new dean
of students who will encourage students to "resolve disagreements among
themselves." In a letter to Gerken on October 13, Ho and Branch said that
those measures were insufficient�and that some of them, such as a ban on
surreptitious recordings, were counterproductive.

"The only reason we even know about" the trap house incident, the judges
said, "is because that student recorded his interactions with school
officials. Does this new policy somehow improve free speech conditions on
campus? Or does it simply ensure that the school will not be caught in the
future for infringing on speech?"

Published under: Free Speech, yale law school

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boycott-will-speak-at-yale-next-week/>