1. Students (and sometimes judges) have gone off the rails at our law schools. David Lat covers the latest debacle at Stanford Law School here, involving the Federalist Society, 5th Circuit Judge Duncan, and a bunch of protestors. Here's a snippet of the long piece, which is worth reading:
Then the event got underway. Approximately 100 protesters lined up outside the event to boo those who entered, with some students calling out individual classmates—e.g., “Shame, John Smith”—à la Cersei’s Walk of Atonement on Game of Thrones. Another 50 to 70 students came into the room where the event took place, compared to about 20 FedSoc students (if that). The protesters carried signs reading "RESPECT TRANS RIGHTS," "FEDSUCK," "BE PRONOUN NOT PRO-BIGOT," and "JUDGE DUNCAN CAN'T FIND THE CLIT" (among others), along with trans-rights flags.
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But here’s where things went off the rails. When the Stanford FedSoc president (an openly gay man) opened the proceedings, he was jeered between sentences. Judge Duncan then took the stage—and from the beginning of his speech, the protestors booed and heckled continually. For about ten minutes, the judge tried to give his planned remarks, but the protestors simply yelled over him, with exclamations like "You couldn't get into Stanford!" "You're not welcome here, we hate you!" "Why do you hate black people?!" "Leave and never come back!" "We hate FedSoc students, f**k them, they don't belong here either!" and "We do not respect you and you have no right to speak here! This is our jurisdiction!"
Throughout this heckling, Associate Dean Steinbach and the University's student-relations representative—who were in attendance throughout the event, along with a few other administrators (five in total, per Ed Whelan)—did nothing. FedSoc members had discussed possible disruption with the student-relations rep before the event, and he said he would issue warnings to those who yelled at the speaker, but only if the yelling disrupted the flow of the event. Despite the difficulty that Judge Duncan was having in giving his remarks, plus the fact that many students were struggling to hear him, no action was taken.
After around ten minutes of trying to give his remarks, Judge Duncan became angry, departed from his prepared remarks, and laced into the hecklers. He called the students “juvenile idiots” and said he couldn’t believe the “blatant disrespect” he was being shown after being invited to speak. He said that the “prisoners were now running the asylum,” which led to a loud round of boos. His pushback riled up the protesters even more.
Eventually, Judge Duncan asked for an administrator to help him restore order. At this point, Associate Dean Steinbach came up to the front and took the podium. Judge Duncan asked to speak privately between them, but she said no, she would prefer to speak to the crowd, and after a brief exchange, Dean Steinbach did speak. She said she hoped that the FedSoc chapter knew that this event was causing real pain to people in the community at SLS. She told Judge Duncan that “she was pained to have to tell him” that his work and previous words had caused real harm to people.
“And I am also pained,” she continued, “to have to say that you are welcome here in this school to speak.” She told Judge Duncan that he had not stuck with his prepared remarks and was partially to blame for the disruption for engaging with the protesters. She told Judge Duncan and FedSoc that she respected FedSoc’s right to host this event, but felt that “the juice wasn't worth the squeeze” when it came to “this kind of event.” She told the protestors that they were free to either stay or to go, and she hoped they would give Duncan the space to speak—but as one FedSoc member told me, the tone and tenor of her remarks suggested she really wanted him to self-censor and self-deport, i.e., end his talk and leave. [UPDATE (10:57 p.m.): The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) posted a transcript of Dean Steinbach’s remarks at the Judge Duncan event, if you’d like to read her words for yourself.]
“This invitation was a setup,” Judge Duncan interjected at one point while Dean Steinbach criticized him. And I can see what would give him that impression: as you can see from this nine-minute video posted by Ed Whelan, when Dean Steinbach spoke, she did so from prepared remarks—in which, as noted by Whelan, she explicitly questioned the wisdom of Stanford’s free-speech policies and said they might need to be reconsidered. (At least at Yale Law School, Dean Heather Gerken had the decency to criticize disruptive protesters, instead of validating them.)
SLS has rightfully apologized. But Judge Duncan could have acted more professionally himself.
2. CA11, per Judge Rosenbaum, upholds the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in this interesting opinion:
Tragically, under-21-year-old gunmen continue to intentionally target others—now, with disturbing regularity, in schools. So along with math, English, and science, schoolchildren must be-come proficient in running, hiding, and fighting armed gunmen in schools. Their lives depend upon it.
But State governments have never been required to stand idly by and watch the carnage rage. In fact, during the Reconstruction Era—when the people adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby making the Second Amendment applicable to the States—many States responded to gun violence by 18-to-20-year-olds by prohibiting that age group from even possessing deadly weapons like pistols.
Acting well within that longstanding tradition, Florida responded to a 19-year-old’s horrific massacre of students, teachers, and coaches at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in a far more restrained way. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act (“the Act”) precludes those under 21 only from buying firearms while still leaving that age group free to possess and use firearms of any legal type. See 2018 Fla. Laws 10, 18–19 (codified at Fla. Stat. § 790.065(13)).
That kind of law is consistent with our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Indeed, the Supreme Court has al-ready identified “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms” as “longstanding” and therefore “presumptively lawful” firearm regulations. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626–27 & n.26 (2008). Florida’s law does just that by imposing a minimum age as a qualification for buying firearms.
Because Florida’s law is consistent with our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, we affirm the district court’s judgment.
17 comments:
I wonder what the response would have been if it was a bunch of right wingers interrupting some lib speaker. Pretty sure violence would have been part of it. We liberals are acting quite foolish in how we are going about our business.
The robe is not an invincibility cloak.
It's not right against left. It the extremes against the middle. The extremes are trying to fool you/us into believing otherwise to recruit you/us to pick sides with them. Reject the invitation.
The fools at SLS should be ashamed, and the administrators should lose their jobs.
The criminals that stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 should serve time.
Decent moderates of good faith like Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Ben Sasse, and Tim Kaine should be held up as examples.
Those seeking to divide us, like Ron DeSantis, Gavin Newsom, Donald Trump, and AOC should be run out of public life on a rail.
The poster above makes a great point. I'm a liberal, a proud liberal. The "progressives" do not share my values. They are as bad, perhaps worse, than the MAGA morons.
This is a school. The Judge was an invited guest of the school. The jerks hooting and hollering should have been ejected from the room. The administrator should be fired.
Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m a life-tenured federal judge. What outrages me is that these kids are being treated like dogshit by fellow students and administrators.
9:15 and 11:01 are you serious? What liberal values don't you share with progressives? Worse than the J6 rioters? An administrator should be fired for one event? AOC is in the same class as Trump?
And Duncan was a target because he has a history of anti-LGBT activism. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court against the constitutionality of same-sex marriage and led efforts to defend state bans on same-sex marriage. When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of marriage equality, Duncan described the decision as an “abject failure” that “imperils civic peace,” and he argued that the decision “raises a question about the legitimacy of the court.”
@1139, this is 915 responding
Re Duncan, so? Nothing that you said justifies the ambush that the SLS administration set him up for, nor does it justify the behavior of the student body. Maybe he did other things and said worse things, I don't know. But disagreement is part of the American way, and civil disagreement is necessary for our system and society to succeed.
re "What liberal values don't you share with progressives?", I don't share the "progressive" value of hating or seeking to silence people simply because they disagree with me. Try having a conversation with a "progressive" in which even small disagreement arises and watch how quickly you are described as "hateful" or a bigot. It's amazing.
re "Worse than the J6 rioters?" No, that's why I said that the Jan 6 criminals should serve time while the fools at SLS should simply be ashamed and the administrators fired (I think we can agree that prison is worse than shame and loss of employment).
re "An administrator should be fired for one event?" Yes, in the case of this particular event. I'm sure you can imagine of host of events that you might also agree would serve as grounds for firing after just one failing.
re "AOC is in the same class as Trump". The word "class" is rather broad. But yes, in the most general sense, I see them as poster children for the politics of division.
If you or anyone else needs a breath of fresh air, here are a couple of my favorites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df6Mf5Q4Gmc (Ben Sasse on Jan 6; a real must match)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk (McCain, the man, a legend, and a political martyr for right versus wrong, fighting bigots at the cost of his own election.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY (Obama "the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation")
Dear judge You do realize that inviting Duncan was a troll job by FedSoc in the first place? And how was this an ambush when everyone knew that would be protesters. All progressives don't hate or seek to silence speech. I'm engaging with you.We can agree to disagree on whether this one events demands someone losing their job. If you think AOC and Trump are at all similar, I wish you well. Godspeed.
9:15 said it well, better than I could.
I support free enterprise and free trade. I think that economic liberty and private ownership of property is the first liberty from which all other freedoms flow. Progressives support policies inimical to the private ownership of property. I don’t think that the means of industrial production should rest in the hand of the state.
Kid
Wow. If ever there was a law school event I wish I was at - that was it.
Lots to think about here. First impression - there’s a lot of underlying anger on both sides that they are not being heard.
In the end I think the protestors would have done better and achieved more if the event had been a point - counter point - with a representative available to respond to the judge’s remarks. Let the market place of ideas have the final say.
Or throw some eggs.
@413, this is 915 again. I assume, but might be wrong, that you are also 1139. (we should probably all do like Kissimmee Kid and adopt pen names in the comments).
You appear to be ignoring what happened and then also changing the rules of the game. When we talk about "progressive values", by definition that is a generalization. Of course "all progressives" don't all do the same things or feel the same ways. Nor does everyone wearing a MAGA hat do the same things or feel the same way. And if you are willing to engage in civil disagreement, I congratulate you and hope for more like you. But look at what happened as SLS. Here are some of the things that the progressives at SLS said:
- "You're not welcome here, we hate you!"
- "Why do you hate black people?!"
- "Leave and never come back!"
- "We hate FedSoc students, f**k them, they don't belong here either!"
- "We do not respect you and you have no right to speak here!"
This kind of mentality and speech characterizes the public understanding of progressive values on speech and debate. When someone says, "hey, the constitution is a limited thing and it says what it says. I don't see anything in there about gay people as a constitutionally protected class," or "I understand the 14th Amendment to be color blind and affirmative action may be well-meaning, but it literally treats people different based on race and therefore is inconsistent with the 14th amendment", the SLS comments are, in my experience, the kind of reaction that you can generally expect from many progressives (enough of them that it has become the public perception of part of the core set of progressive values). And, I think that readers of the comments on this blog, subject to DOM's censorship of the nastiest comments, see it in action regularly.
The Paradox: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them
It saddens me that the supposed "best and brightest" newcomers to our profession have seemingly lost the ability (or the desire) to think critically or advocate with civility. These students were given an opportunity to debate the merits of Judge Duncan's opinions and judicial philosophy, yet squandered that opportunity in favor of base name-calling and yelling. I didn't go to Stanford Law School. I would not have gotten in, even if I had applied. But I could come up with more intelligent ways to challenge and debate Judge Duncan than asking the jurist "where the clit is."
The administrators fare even worse, in my view, particularly the one who came with prepared remarks to ask--stunningly--whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Is making citizens formulate and articulate critical thoughts worth listening to a position that is contrary to their own? Jeez, I hope so. It is the basis of our democratic experiment, after all.
1149 - there is no paradox. Unlimited tolerance of ideas can exist so long as two elements remain: 1) peaceful/respectful disagreement; and 2) the vindication of the rule of law.
Some fool can say that she thinks white people should be second in line for COVID vaccines all she wants. As long as she doesn't whip out a gun and force white people to the back of the line without lawful process, let the fool speak.
So long as peace and process prevail, this messy system will zig a little to the right and zag a little to the left, but in the long run, it works out. As Churchill said, "democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried".
That's why it is not the right versus the left. It is the extremes versus the center. The extremes want what they want whether regardless of rule of law or peaceful disagreement.
2:05 Unfortunately, speech and ideas turn into actions. Even peaceful actions. Laws get passed based on intolerant ideas and before you know it there is no legal protection from some of the extremist ideas. Especially if some of those intolerant ideas restrict voting rights so we can't zig zag back and forth as you mentioned.
I think the actions of Associate Dean Steinbach were outrageous.
@102
I guess that's the difference between you and me. I believe in genuine free speech and in the market place of ideas.
What you are suggesting is a self fulfilling prophesy of extremist violence where only what you believe and nothing else is acceptable.
If we decide that some ideas are so bad that they must be banned, who decides what is acceptable? You? What happens if the next guy disagrees with your assessment and he decides that he, and not you, is a better arbiter of acceptable ideas? Then we're stuck between a rock and hard place. No thank you.
It's concerning that so many people are willing to throw away freedom of speech. In the words of Donald Trump "some people will say, 'oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech' these are foolish people." I wonder 1:02, are you a progressive?
The extremes versus the middle.
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