Yale Law Controversy Prompts Response from Leading Judge

Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon highlights one prominent judge’s response to a recent episode at Yale Law School.

A federal judge has encouraged all of his colleagues to “carefully consider” whether the Yale Law School students who attempted to shout down a bipartisan panel on free speech “should be disqualified from potential clerkships.”

D.C. Circuit judge Laurence Silberman sent an email on Thursday to all federal judges in the United States, urging them to take the fracas at the nation’s top law school seriously.

“The latest events at Yale Law School,” Silberman wrote, “prompt me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted. 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.”

The email set off a flurry of replies from Silberman’s colleagues, several of whom expressed interest in discussing the matter further.

“I don’t know where I come out on this yet,” District Judge Eric Komitee of the Eastern District of New York wrote, “but agree this is a topic of tremendous societal importance.”

The emails come amid revelations that the protest was even more disruptive than initially reported. According to Original Jurisdiction‘s David Lat, students in a federal courts class across the hall reported that the “floor was shaking,” and students on a different floor could hear the din while they were taking an exam.

The law school also had to move a faculty meeting online because attendees couldn’t hear anything over the tumult. Faculty at the meeting kept looking to Heather Gerken, the Dean of Yale Law School, to confront the protesters, according to Lat, but she did nothing.

After news of the protest broke, the law school released a statement on Thursday alleging that police were only “on hand” to ensure that the protesters quieted down, not to protect the safety of panelists. “Fortunately,” the statement claims, police “assistance was not needed and the event went forward until its conclusion.”