Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho recently announced that he will be taking on cancel culture through his law clerk hiring practices. Judge Ho believes that the most significant cancel culture problems in legal education today are at Yale Law School. He has therefore decided that, in his capacity as a United States judge, he will no longer hire any Yale Law graduates as law clerks. And he is encouraging other judges to join him.
As I understand things from David Lat's useful coverage, Judge Ho's goal is to change the culture of law schools. By imposing a boycott, and by getting as many other conservative judges as he can to join him, he might discourage conservative applicants from enrolling at Yale Law School. That might pressure Yale Law School to change its culture. And that in turn might cause a shift in the culture at other schools.
This a bad idea, and I hope other judges do not adopt it. Given our blog's traditional readership among conservative judges and clerks, I thought I would take a minute here to say why.
