It may even have worked at Yale, slightly, despite the small number of judges involved. In a word, you might hold them accountable. You might hurt them enough to discourage others from following their example. You might separate them from the powerful institutions that enable their bad behavior. And if enough of you call them out, you might deny them a platform. You can’t stop people from doing evil things, says the canceler, but you don’t have to associate with the ones who do. If that answer sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve heard something similar from the purveyors of cancel culture themselves. If Yale is trying to put the whole legal profession in an ideological straitjacket, shouldn’t the judges withdraw their support and tell students to do the same? So, if you’re a judge alarmed by intolerance and bigotry taking over the heart of the legal academy, what can you do?Ĭondemn, call down bad press, and use your little bit of market power to punish Yale Law students for their association with the school that did the bad things.Īfter all, every time the judges hire a clerk from Yale, they confirm the school’s prestige and help it attract students. When institutions like these go bad, sooner or later we all feel the consequences. Originalism? First articulated by Yale Law professor Robert Bork and spread by the Federalist Society, which held its inaugural conference in 1982 at Yale.Ĭritical race theory? An offspring of the critical legal studies movement most famously associated with Harvard. Nearly all of them have been shaped by Harvard and Yale, either attending Harvard or Yale themselves, or having mentors and peers who did, or at least studying ideas that Yale and Harvard played important roles in developing. The judiciary, the White House counsel’s office, the legal advisors of executive departments and congressional committees, the law thinkers at think tanks, the blawgers, the top lawyers at top firms - these people form an elite layer of legal minds that collectively produces the dominant legal culture, deciding what is thinkable and sayable at the highest levels of legal controversy. Look below the waterline, and you’ll see half the Supreme Court’s clerks coming from Yale and Harvard law schools, and a third of America’s law professors. (It’s Amy Coney Barrett.)Īnd the famous people are only the tip of the iceberg. In the past 40 years, only a single Justice was appointed who never attended Harvard or Yale. The Supreme Court is also a Yale-Harvard affair currently the two law schools claim four justices apiece. Bush, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton.) Joe Biden did not go to Yale Law School, but his son Hunter did. Bush, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, George W. (The list: Sargent Shriver, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Here’s a fun fact-at least if you went to Harvard or Yale: from 1972 through 2016, not a single presidential election passed without a Yale or Harvard alum nominated to a major-party ticket.
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