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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34396 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Let's talk about the Stanford Law School situation that has gone on for a few days.

A Timeline:

  • The Federalist Society invited a judge, Kyle Duncan, to speak. 70 students emailed FedSoc to cancel the event. [https://freebeacon.com/campus/dogshit-federal-judge-decries-disruption-of-his-remarks-by-stanford-law-students-and-calls-for-termination-of-the-stanford-dean-who-joined-the-protesters/]("When the Federalist Society refused to cancel, students began putting up fliers with the names and faces of everyone on the board. "You should be ashamed," the posters read.")

  • Duncan was basically shouted down during his talk. Most in attendance were protestors to his speech, with people showing up with signs like "Duncan can't find the clit" and such. They accused him for ruling on cases that were against their beliefs, for example taking the right to vote away ("The students appeared to have little familiarity with Duncan’s jurisprudence. Some accused him of suppressing the voting rights of African Americans, Duncan said—only to cite a case in which Duncan had actually dissented from the majority.")

  • Duncan asked administrators to control the situation, and a DEI Dean went up to the podium and instead of controlling the crowd, read out a statement accusing Duncan of causing harm (video)

  • Duncan was escorted out by federal marshals

  • Dean of Stanford Law School + President of Stanford issued a joint apology letter to judge Kyle Duncan, and the Dean also sent an email to alumni

  • Now, the Dean of Stanford Law School is being targeted. She teaches Constitutional Law and her classroom white board was plastered with statements that argue for their 1st amendment rights and the heckler's veto (source). Some excerpts below:

  • When Martinez’s class adjourned on Monday, the protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks that read "counter-speech is free speech," stared silently at Martinez as she exited her first-year constitutional law class at 11:00 a.m., according to five students who witnessed the episode. The student protesters, who formed a human corridor from Martinez’s classroom to the building’s exit, comprised nearly a third of the law school, the students told the Washington Free Beacon.

  • The majority of Martinez’s class—approximately 50 students out of the 60 enrolled—participated in the protest themselves, two students in the class said. The few who didn’t join the protesters received the same stare down as their professor as they hurried through the makeshift walk of shame.

  • "They gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black" and join the crowd, said Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class who declined to participate in the protest. "It didn’t feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating."

  • The Stanford National Lawyers Guild said Saturday that Martinez had thrown "capable and compassionate administrators" under the bus. The law school’s Immigration & Human Rights Law Association issued a similar declaration on Sunday, writing to its mailing list that Stanford’s apology to Duncan "has only made this situation worse." And Stanford Law School’s chapter of the American Constitution Society expressed outrage that Martinez and Tessier-Lavigne had framed Duncan "as a victim, when in fact he himself had made civil dialogue impossible."

This follows on the heals of similar kind of situations at Yale Law School (no.1 in the country, Stanford's usually no.2).

Don't have much to add here. I've seen a few student protests (but didn't go to UC Berkeley and wasn't present at any big ones). None were like this, but maybe law school is different. Also I wonder whether Stanford and Yale law schools sizes (300-500 law students, versus Harvard's ~2000 law students) means that it's easier to pressure everyone to join in on something. Being starred down by a large % of your classmates is probably not a fun experience, especially when you know most of them.

I feel like it should be utterly self-evident why a class of aspiring lawyers should be capable of listening to the words of a party they oppose with enough respect to let them give their whole argument in peace, and then responding in kind, without resorting to shouting them down or implicitly threatening their safety.

And that's before accounting for the fact that it's a Federal Judge doing the speaking.

Literally the whole point of having a legal system is to allow civil dispute resolution where each party is heard and the winning party determined according to set rules which usually don't account for "we'll be really angry at you if you don't decide in our favor."

This is largely the reason why Judges sitting on the Bench are kept completely separate from the public, don't walk through the public hallways, and generally have their personal information kept confidential and not publicly available. Because miscreants would use implied or explicit threats to get them to change their rulings.

Of course we've got law grads who are full attorneys throwing molotovs and attending active riots (HOPEFULLY in observer capacity) so I dunno, seems like this is just going to get worse when these guys graduate.

I'll say, I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.

And finally, I flip my lid over the "counter-protesting is free speech" and justifying the heckler's veto logic. Free speech implies reciprocal obligations. You don't shout over somebody else when they're given a platform then claim that because you're louder your speech means more.

Or more simply put, knowingly interfering with another person's speech (especially when they have a willing audience) implicitly forfeits whatever claim you had to being permitted to speak freely. If you're in a court hearing and you loudly scream every time the other attorney is presenting arguments... you don't win the case by default, surprisingly enough.

Not the first time The Federalist Society has caused a kerfuffle at Stanford:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/federalist-society-stanford.html

In a sense, I have to applaud those FedSoc students for continuing to position themselves outside the local Overton Window.

I'll say, I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.

They'll have their people on the bar committees and as a result the tactics WILL work.

Sort of?

Gonna get them cut off from the most lucrative legal careers outside of pure grift positions, if so.

Judges still have the ability to exercise contempt powers within their own courtrooms, at least.

Gonna get them cut off from the most lucrative legal careers outside of pure grift positions, if so.

Not even a little bit. The vast majority of BigLaw attorneys (by definition the most lucrative legal career) never see the inside of a courtroom. Sure the Litigation practice group does, but M&A, T&E, IP, etc. never actually go in front of a judge, and a 4th year T&E associate makes just as much money as a 4th year Lit associate.

Why would Biglaw hire them as associates in the first place? They ostensibly DO NOT want the ones who are prone to acting out against authority and becoming actively disruptive to get their way.

They'll be the judges too, after a short while.

I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.

Stanford Law students are perfectly capable of seeing and responding to incentives; it's probably what they're best at. When put into a different institutional environment, they'll conform to fit it very easily, better than the vast majority of the public would.

It's not really accurate to call this a riot, even, if you mean a riot to be some kind of small-d democratic outburst against institutional constraints. This was not only allowed but encouraged by the Stanford bureaucracy. If this was bad for their careers, they'd do the exact opposite.

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