The bedrock principle of free speech is under siege at some of our nation’s leading law schools as U.S. News & World Report unveils its latest law school rankings. Leaders of the very places where constitutional law is taught, where reasoned debate over contentious issues is supposed to be encouraged, are flinching in the wake of internecine discord on campuses.
Consider two of the nation’s leading law schools: Stanford and Yale. Both are embroiled in extreme examples of curtailing speech for political views. Yale has earned derision for several recent incidents of students shouting down speakers with whom they disagreed; also, administrators threatened a student based on what they considered inappropriate speech. Stanford made waves with an extended shout-down of a conservative federal judge that culminated in a dean chastising the judge for his rulings.
Some federal judges were so appalled they took the extraordinary step of declaring they would no longer recruit their law clerks — an essential step for ambitious law graduates — from Yale or Stanford.
