US Circuit Judge Vows Not to Hire From Yale Law, Condemns Prevalent Cancel Culture on Campus

Buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., on April 15, 2008. Christopher Capozziello/Getty Images

A federal judge has pledged to combat cancel culture by turning down clerk applicants graduated from Yale Law School, where blocking speech or shouting down speakers “seem to occur with special frequency” when compared with other institutions across the country.

“Yale not only tolerates the cancellation of views—it actively practices it,” said James C. Ho of the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals during his keynote address to the Kentucky Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society. The Sept. 29 speech, according to the National Review, was titled “Agreeing to Disagree—Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture.”

“Starting today, I will no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School,” Ho, a Trump appointee, reportedly told the audience. “And I hope that other judges will join me as well.”

The judge pointed to several high-profile cases as examples of the intolerant campus culture he wanted to resist, most notably the disruption of a Federalist Society-sponsored debate this March by Yale Law students protesting the appearance of Kristen Waggoner, the president of conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Waggoner, who arrived at the New Haven campus to debate Monica Miller of the progressive American Humanist Association, said at that time that the protestors were “pounding on the walls, blocking the exits, and disrupting the event throughout” in their attempt to “physically intimidate” her and other students. With a jostling crowd of protesters blocking the only exit from the event, the two women had to be escorted out of the building by police officers after the panel concluded.

That incident also prompted Senior D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, a Ronald Reagan appointee, to send a letter to all federal judges in the United States, urging them to not hire any Yale Law graduate who has participated in the protest.

“The latest events at Yale Law School prompt me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted,” wrote Silberman, who died on Oct. 2 at the age of 86. “All federal judges—and all federal judges are presumably committed to free speech—should carefully consider whether any student so identified should be disqualified from potential clerkships.”

“Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education,” Ho said, according to the National Review. “Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.”

Yale, according to Ho, “sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large.” He also pointed to an earlier incident at Georgetown Law, where Ilya Shapiro, a would-be lecturer, was placed on leave after he posted on social media criticism of President Joe Biden’s use of identity politics when selecting a candidate to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Shapiro was offered his job back, but ultimately decided that he no longer wanted to work at the institution, which he described as a “toxic” place that “excludes dissenting voices.”

Ho said that denying clerkship to Yale Law graduates doesn’t mean he endorses cancel culture, but that it’s to give those who actively participate in cancel culture a taste of their own medicine.

“I don’t want to cancel Yale,” Ho said. “I want Yale to stop canceling people like me.”

Yale Law School didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.