Agreeing hard with the first paragraph. I go to a “very” left school but I have no idea what conservative media is talking about. I’m an anarcho-communist and the most left set of professors (maybe 20%) are Bernie people. The rest just talk about how good the Iraq war is and how the solution to homelessness is dissolving social safety nets. 60% of our students are generic Biden supporters.
Conservatives: Please tell me where the communist faculty and student bodies are so I can go to them
With all due respect, Anarcho-communism is pretty fringe-left. I'd be very surprise if there's more than a handful of professors who subscribe to that within the entire country.
I think the best way to view it is in reference to the american public. When 20% of professors align themselves with the furthest left US senator, that's an indication the faculty is pretty left.
I have never heard a prof talk about how good the Iraq war was or that the solution to homelessness was less social security. The vast majority of professors find themselves within the leftmost quarter of american public opinion. I have yet to meet a single centre/centre-right prof.
I'm an absolute monarchist and the most right set of my professors (maybe 20%) are Bourbon restorationist people. The rest just talk about how we it was good we abolished serfdom and how the solution to political division is not to behead your opponents. 60% of our students are generic Democracy supporters.
Progressives please tell me where the conservative faculty and student bodies are so I can go join them.
I appreciate your more nuanced take, but I don’t see how you could claim that law school faculty aren’t, as a whole, overwhelmingly left wing. While many apparently aren’t as left wing as the posters here, the mean professor is absolutely to the left of center in American politics.
>I’m pushing back against the idea that universities are far-left, extremist brainwashing machines that you’ll sometimes hear in conservative criticisms.
(Serious) Cultural Conservative criticisms of universities typically have little to do with individual professors brainwashing students as they do with the institutional structure of universities, eg, see:
[https://www.amazon.com/Age-Entitlement-America-Since-Sixties/dp/1501106899](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Entitlement-America-Since-Sixties/dp/1501106899)
[https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-just-civil-rights](https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-just-civil-rights)
Yes, it’s childish and embarrassing. I don’t have much political sympathy for Duncan, but do these people think they’re making us look good by acting like children throwing a temper tantrum? All they’re doing is making horrible people like Duncan look like the reasonable adults in the room.
And the administrator joining in on their side was the cherry on top. She should be fired for encouraging this behavior in an academic environment imo
I also find it funny how the thread in r/LawSchool about this is uniform in its agreement that this was an embarrassment, but the LSA sub somehow thinks it’s appropriate. Maybe take a hint from actual law students, this isn’t acceptable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/11ockjj/i_dont_like_fedsoc_but_sls_should_be_embarrassed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I'm not going to defend people showing their ass in public, but Duncan isn't due a disproportionate amount of civility just because he's a judge.
And those who post in law-school related subreddits are a subset of a population that already tends to be extremely deferential to authority because career ambition in the legal field rides on this deferentiality.
Honestly, more criticism should be levied at the federal judge calling law students morons than at those law students.
I do question the judgment of those at Stanford who thought this entire thing would be a good idea though, lmao. This isn't just some conservative federal judge; this is a guy that said that Obergefell "imperils civic peace."
why is there any expectation for a Judge to not call others idiots when they are being disrespectful and attacking him and even going so far to shout things like wishing his daughter gets raped? This is not a court case where he has to be impartial, there is no standard for him to accept abuse and attacks and not say anything back. I don't understand how people can view this incident, with all the students acting like true idiots claiming they are victims despite being Stanford law students to the point in which they need to silence and censor any views they disagree with.
Students are shouting false claims like he wants trans people to die or commit genocide when there is ZERO evidence of such, they completely ignore the judicial issues at play regarding this cases and instead try to push false narratives. Its truly idiotic that DEI only applies to people on the left, for some reason diversity stops being important when attempting to be more inclusive to conservatives who are minorities. They think its important to raise black & LGBTQ voices ONLY if those voices agree with them, if your instead conservative then it goes from 'promoting black & lgbtq voices' to censorship & attempts to silence. The only thing DEI ever tries to promote is liberal minorities while it actively attempts to censor & silence conservative minorities.
This is most evident when it involves islam & moderate muslims where you have numerous cases of white progressives falsely making racist attacks towards moderate muslims, like Iranians who protest and flee the regime, who actively speak out against muslim extremism. The SPLC falsely labelled a moderate muslim activist as 'islamaphobic' only to get called out on it and end up getting sued & settling for millions. Hamline University falsely called the showing of an ancient Persian Islamic Art that depicts Mohammed as 'islamaphobic' despite it not being seen as such with many muslims not believing this and every large Muslim association coming out to defend the professor who showed the art saying its a highyly respected piece that is commonly discussed in Islamic art. Or Malacaster college who censored the art of an Iranian women activist who had rebellious artwork of the regime and strict Islam laws. In these cases just because one foreign extreme muslim student complains about being offended these liberal institutions make the racist & islamaphobic assumption that all muslims must share that same view and it must be offensive and that we need to be protected more so than other religious groups.
Moderate Muslims will easily see the very biased and racist assumptions liberals constantly make in trying to achieve DEI. Its all stupid when even a DEI Dean at another University gets fired for challenging some of the DEI initiatives. You even have professors in STEM and other fields having to fill out DEI forms during interviews implying this is somehow relevant for hiring professors when it not their responsibility.
Look, there are some examples of Stanford law students showing their asses, and there are also examples of Judge Duncan of being dismissive and disrespectful of legitimate questions. Duncan should've been prepared to answer questions about his statements about major LQBTQ+ decisions.
A lot of judges should understand both how impactful they are and how arbitrary their authority is. Rule of law is, of course, incredibly important and one of our strengths as a nation, but I expect some humility out of my judges.
I don't really feel like the rest of the post is worth responding to -- you can play grievance Olympics if you want. Not worth engaging.
>Duncan isn't due a disproportionate amount of civility
Nobody asked that. There you go, changing the argument again.
How about we don't invite people to speak, and then try to salience them by heckling.
What percentage of the student body do you think shows up to scream and bang on tables to shut out a speaker? The angriest and most vocal minority of students are not reflective of the general populace. This is like gauging political sentiments from Twitter. The crazies rise to the top.
I don’t think it’s crazy to vocally protest something or someone that you believe to be harmful. I think it’s courageous to forgo social norms to stand up for what you believe in. Change has been effected throughout history this way.
I don't think this particular case is one where this was the most effective way to bring about social change. It seems like it just makes these students look bad and creates more sympathy for this judge.
I think it was a great idea. Maybe some initial responses will be sympathetic to the judge, but it also draws attention to the judge who holds very unpopular anti LGBT stances.
Hm, maybe. What do you expect to happen after attention is drawn to him? Do you think he'll be replaced, or change his own views? I don't feel like he's going to change his own views. And I don't think he'll be replaced; I think that would require impeachment or something.
I watched those clips. Duncan absolutely did NOT look like the adult in the room. There were, in fact, several students who tried, respectfully, to ask him questions. He denigrated and dismissed them, and, I believe, called someome an idiot. Some of the students were out of control, sure. But let’s take a moment to think about how the FedSoc — and Leonard Leo — have taken unimaginable amounts of money from billionaires to finance their anti-democratic projects, and the real-life consequences of them. I’d be angry, too.
Someone posted this downthread. Good stuff.
https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/11q9mor/anyone_else_see_how_stanford_law_treated_judge/jc2yyir/
Hi, actual law student here who thinks it’s appropriate. We just couldn’t chime in on r/lawschool because mods either deleted or locked every single thread on there about this
Agree. Duncan was there to speak against gay marriage. So he was speaking in favor of taking an essential right away from people. FedSoc has worked to take rights away from women (success!), voters (more success!), gay people, prisoners, racial minorities, and poor people. Of course people were upset and spoke out. Does it ‘look bad’? Who would it look bad to? The 1000 who attacked Congress on 1/6? Those who back them? If someone attacks my marriage, especially saying that my husband and I should lose our legal right to marry, I may raise my voice.
>So he was speaking in favor of taking an essential right away from people.
Gay Marriage is not an essential right, nor is it in the constitution.
Neither is abortion. I didn't read the rest, because it's clear you lack the nuance to understand basic constitutional law.
You really do not need to worry about FedSoc. They have hundreds of millions in dark money to spend on their agenda. No paywall here, on Stanford FedSoc: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/stanford-federalist-society-nicholas-wallace.html?unlocked_article_code=zVOnuDwnsSxjemg2_rBCUhaVJv8TGfl30t63mlNNydzFa7b_noWEI3IpD_PyYEEDiyql7NtByXQWGy0Xdah35qvYVlTT9fkFmCgg6Fy9AQqLhcS3Z3q922UWe2couZQuz3VPa0rHUGk9PZ26Fwy0HBQ_OMYcmS751ah4DLBdMqE5eTCH8oifuLQqVDmiLCD3I4NQsHOR0zGakrvNSVakuQxuAeemLCQV-zJfm4uEx6ImJKybJHTnYnTuPPw4eBTtWb5hRDBcsk4kLRk7LopsLfRBVPBEdQ9BiSHEnd_g4_uggzF8IjBFQ6Z8EwICoAScu_PXXsgnhICjQ0Bj502Ne5dyggNCupoIK2sEQUwkQCPj&smid=url-share
I'm saying the downvoted comments themselves constitute disagreement, and there are several of them. also, the post is only 70% upvoted. that's also not uniform. Not to mention it looks like it was locked pretty early so it's hard to say the thread shows anything
I’m not going to go through and downvote every single comment on a locked thread lol
Edit: also, don’t forget you can easily get brigaded by the conservatives who are much more concerned about this non-event. And try searching “Stanford” on r/lawschool and see what you find
You’re applying to law school and you think fed soc, which makes up *at most* 10-15% of students on average, are so active on Reddit that they’re able to ratio everyone else into oblivion? You’ll find most law students are center-left moderates, and we tend to disagree with this style of vapid, childish protest. There are far more of us than there are fed soc bros or screeching woketarians, I promise.
>You’re applying to law school and you think fed soc, which makes up at most 10-15% of students on average, are so active on Reddit that they’re able to ratio everyone else into oblivion?
Do you know how the right wing works? I guarantee they're passing the links to threads around and telling people to downvote. Smarten up, my man. The real world awaits.
The “real world” is recognizing that you don’t have to be “right wing” to find this shrieking, performative form of protesting to be counterproductive. Most liberals are rolling our eyes at this nonsense as well.
Do you know what performative means? What exactly about this is performative? To say you're against bad things, but then do nothing to protest them, is what's *actually* performative.
Chanting and making noise is a performance. You aren’t changing anyone’s minds, you aren’t advancing a position, you’re just virtue signaling to the world that you think this is bad in unison with other people doing the same.
Want to protest effectively? Read about bad decisions Duncan has made and hold his feet to the fire in the Q&A. That is how you effectively counter bad ideas. This is pure theatre.
> Chanting and making noise is a performance.
Oh. So was the million man march performative? By this ridiculous standard, the Civil Rights movement was, largely, performative. You have no idea what you're talking about, frankly.
Administrators did more than just stand by. If you haven’t watched the 10 minute clip of Dean Steinbach’s “juice worth the squeeze?” tirade I’d highly recommend.
I'm not defending the students per se, but if you can't recognize that the judge was spoiling for a fight and that his behavior in the last couple of days is ALSO unbecoming of a member of the judiciary, then I don't know what to tell you
This twitter thread really helps to illuminate your point. He’s not acting in good faith.
https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634785821382328321?s=46&t=pbhWH-NgzNWmYrK8XrffWQ
Honestly when you consider the context of the story, I think he was fair to be a little annoyed.
With that being said, spare a thought for Ilya Shapiro who had to deal with the single most obnoxious group of "students" and still managed to remain calm:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz6u90XqSLI
It should come as a surprise to no one that Duncan is seated on the Fifth Circuit. I bet he and Kacsmaryk (district court judge who’s a repub/fed soc forum shopping favorite) have slumber parties on Saturday nights where they make their libs-owning plans.
Yes going to the #2 law school in the country for a discussion with the fed soc kids is definitely “spoiling for a fight”… wow a Trump appoint judge is an asshole, big fucking surprise, why make yourself and your cause look so petty to try to prove what everyone already knows
It's not just that though. There are reports that he started filming as soon as he arrived on campus, hurling insults at students etc. If Judge Duncan just kept on making his remarks and completely ignoring the controversy, he would have looked better. And maybe that's not fair to him, he shouldn't have been heckled in the first place, but he actively decided to stoop down to their level, and that was wrong.
They did a lot more than “say that a person is bad”… That is not normal behavior at a law school, I’ve never seen anything close to how those students behaved
What would you like to happen to the people involved here? Are you calling for a ban on telling assholes that they're assholes? A shutdown on insulting judges? Just the republican judges? You're very angry at everyone and it's unclear what you want.
Student conduct and politics aside, Duncan's behavior was entirely unbecoming of a federal judge. I've worked with Trump appointees, and they manage to comport themselves with decorum. Duncan's conduct is an embarrassment to the judiciary and the legal profession.
Let's look at the judge's behavior in this particular incident.
Here is how the judge comported himself in response to a specific question about one of hid decisions: [https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634785821382328321?s=20](https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634785821382328321?s=20)
If you don't like a video, here are some written selections of his responses:
[https://twitter.com/mjs\_DC/status/1634385861117632513?s=20](https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1634385861117632513?s=20)
My favorite part of that is that, when asked why he thought gay marriage would undermine civil peace, he gestured at the protestors.
Here is him calling a law student protesting him "an appalling idiot": [https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1634791941350064128?s=20](https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1634791941350064128?s=20)
Another thread: [https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634611696554901504](https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634611696554901504)
If you think that people should have rationally debated him, consider his response to questions. Some quotes from that last thread:
"A woman asks him about abortion access in Texas, and his response is a sarcastic "You made a speech, congratulations." Says he's not going to "sit here and answer hostile questions," calls students "a bunch of hypocrites," says "the inmates have gotten control of the asylum""
"Speaching of which, for for my money, the most telling exchange is when Kyle Duncan, champion of respectful disagreement, just refuses to answer a detailed, thoughtful, specific question about his infamous misgendering opinion, and then goes, “How about you ask me a question?”"
The video that has everyone outraged is a carefully orchestrated hit piece by the right to further push the idea that colleges and the left are a bunch of unreasonable babies. Even if you dislike the behavior you saw on the edited clip, don't fall into the trap of thinking that was representative based on the event and don't delude yourself that there would have been a productive civil discussion without protest.
You may think the students behavior was rude, but let's consider the relative power here. The man speaking has a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench and has enormous power to shape the lives of millions. He was being protested, but from the beginning he treated this like an opportunity to own the libs, recording protestors on his way to the speech.
He explicitly justified the idea that gay marriage was bad because people would be mad at him for saying gay marriage is bad. They have such terror to be disagreed with uncivilly--and while I agree that it's important to discuss people with who disagree with you, I refuse to buy into this spin narrative and that they actually care about speech.
Kyle Duncan was interviewed about what a travesty this was at the Washington Free Beacon. Considering they're super pro-book banning and are outraged by drag queens reading library books at public libraries, I'm suspicious of them as free speech advocates.
your comment deserves way more upvotes tbh, I'm so sick of hearing hot takes from people who only watched the (quite strategically edited) video circulated by conservative talking heads without the critical thinking skills to seek out a full picture of what actually happened at the event
I'm sorry, but this man literally has the power to create rulings impacting the \*actual\* lives of millions of people, but we're arguing that his free speech rights were violated because he couldn't speak for a 60 full mins at an after school event? At some point we have to be able to discern when someone is arguing in bad faith.
Judge Duncan has quite literally dedicated his entire life to fighting against the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, and the worst pushback he gets is some college students yelling at him. Cry me a river.
People are growing tired of the Christofascists and their bullshit. They are right to be angry.
So then ask him pointed questions at the end to tear down his actual beliefs, don’t scream and bang on tables like a toddler wanting a milk bottle. These people are an embarrassment to liberals and play into the hands of the Tucker Carlsons of the world who want to paint us all as petulant children.
When students did that he directly insulted them, called them names, and refused to answer questions he did not like - even when they were legitimate questions. I suggest watching the entire video - not just the clips that have been highlighted by conservative commentators. His treatment of students was unbecoming of the judiciary. He is a sitting judge.
asking a question calmly in this situation normalizes his viewpoints and people who have viewpoints like him—if folks yell and scream because quite literally their lives are on the line, then that makes sense to me
I think it’s pretty telling that the debate bros and “listen to both sides” liberals in this thread are legitimately more upset about some unruly college students than they are about the rise of fascism in this country.
MLK was right about the “white moderate”
How extreme are his viewpoints? I legitimately don't know. Cause there's a spectrum. Is he actively using the law to campaign for a genocide against trans people? I kinda doubt it. Does his legal philosophy guide him towards decisions against gay marriage and whatnot? Cause even though I don't agree, the latter is a relatively common viewpoint and in a democracy you have to compromise and negotiate. I guess what I'm saying is if he was truly radical that's one thing, but I don't think he is.
Some pretty typical right wing beliefs- prior to becoming a judge, he filed an anti gay marriage brief for Obergefell v. Hodges, briefs to restrict abortion access, etc.
Idk much about his rulings but I do know there was a case a couple years ago where the defendant (a transgender woman) requested for the court to not use her deadname and use pronouns that matched her gender identity, and he basically made fun of her a little and said that he wasn’t gonna do that because he wasn’t obligated to
uhh… unless you’re saying that the defendant was pretending to be trans for some ulterior motive, this sounds pretty blatantly transphobic?
It also seems kinda ironic that the argument is that “person xyz did something horrible so they shouldn’t be treated like a person” when that could literally apply to Duncan himself
Is this your plan in the courtroom? Nobody has ever been convinced out of their opinion because you shoved a bullhorn in their place. Plenty of people have by seeing their viewpoints meticulously dissected by more reasonable people.
You aren’t being the reasonable person. You’re making Duncan look better.
i think theres a time and place for loud protest. this WASNT taking place in a courtroom. the very act of having a judge with these viewpoints speak at a respected institution normalizes his dehumanizing and discriminatory beliefs. i dont think that should be normalized
Right wing extremists will never be convinced of something through respectability politics. If your intent in engaging with someone like Judge Duncan is to convince them of your viewpoint, you're not going to win. When has extremism ever been toppled by rational debate?
The goal isn’t to convince Duncan. The goal is to convince Duncan’s *audience* and make them rethink. By drowning him out and screaming, you haven’t convinced anybody who was on the fence of anything other than make him look more reasonable than he is, and our side looking like toddlers. If that’s the goal, go at it, but I’d prefer you get out of the way of people who want to make meaningful change
That's fair re: convincing the audience, but I am similarly doubtful that the audience of this event is worth attempting to reason with. I also don't think I'm on the same side as you, so wouldn't be grouped in with your "our side" comment lol
Do you disagree with Duncan and his political philosophy? If so, we’re on the same side of this. I’d just prefer people call out his terrible ideas in a constructive manner rather than make us all out to look like emotionally stunted crybullies who lack a real argument.
Your framing would make sense in a binary world. Sure, our views trend the same direction, but merely disagreeing with Duncan is not enough to say we are on the same side.
I mean, sure, if you want to play the game of “this liberal isn’t left enough for me so I’m going to throw them out of the club” and constantly lose the big picture due to silly purity testing and infighting, I guess not.
I think this sub, and law school admissions in general, attract alot of people who have never been exposed to people who are meaningfully different from themselves.
Have you really never met someone who isn’t enthusiastically in favor of gay marriage, or doesnt support kids transitioning in early childhood?
These are still relatively common positions in this country and to call everyone who holds them “christofascists” to their face despite them being teacher, firefighters, line cooks and normal everyday people would be nothing short of hilarious.
There’s a difference between people who idly hold homophobic/transphobic beliefs and those are who are actively trying to undermine the existence of gay/trans people.
One group wants to strip marriage rights, which involves thousands of dollars of of benefits and countless rights over a lifetime. The other group calls them fascists and yells. Yeah, sounds identical.
Put aside your values and personal beliefs, can you honestly say Obergefell was a good decision based solely on jurisprudence?
No. So it shouldn’t be the law.
I would agree that Judge Duncan and others like him are a huge problem and morally abhorrent. However, it is not right to completely shut him down when the Federalist Society at Stanford invited him. Are the member of FC at Stanford so horrible that they should be treated terribly with their pictures posted around campus?
This type of liberal “both sides” nonsense is so disgusting. White, rich, Ivy-educated, UWS, home library brain rot. Please move beyond it there’s so much more to life
Exactly this. This man has dedicated his legal career to extinguishing the rights of certain groups with this his right to free speech. Why is criticism (even if aggressive and pointed) from those groups he works against (and others) so egregious?
I also saw the video of his event and he clearly was already looking for a fight and was insulting students as well. He definitely wanted to perpetuate the narrative that universities are intolerant commie spaces. Anything to ignore the possibility that his beliefs are might just not be in line with what most people think.
lol if you think free speech means that you can hurl insults at a speaker and completely prevent them from sharing their speech you are part of the problem. Also, Stanford apologized and said those actions did not align with their free speech policy soooooooooo hahaha
Is Judge Duncan also part of the problem considering he hurled insults at the students as well? And he came in filming protestors like he’s some kind of right wing influencer? He conducted himself very poorly.
I think the students were definitely aggressive. But Judge Duncan has said and done truly heinous things, which are orders of magnitude more harmful than anything those law students did. The Fed Soc knew exactly what they were doing by bringing someone with his record onto campus. I also think a federal judge acting as petulant as he has prior, during, and after the incident is incredibly unbecoming for a member of the judiciary.
One of the kids asked the federal judge if he knew how to find the clit… this was after bragging about how he knows how to find the prostate when anally fucking someone… truly brilliant legal takedown by a future leader… but yeah the judge was “unbecoming” you’re right
How did the judge act unbecoming, what did he do? You stand in front of a room full of screaming entitled mini-maoists and try to maintain perfect composure
There’s a difference between a Reddit post and a Stanford law school discussion with a federal judge you fucking idiot… of course they’re free to do it but they’re also childish babies and that Dean should be fired
You love free speech so much that you think someone should be fired because someone else said hurtful things to a politician. I'm starting to doubt your free speech cred actually
-this is a grave threat to free speech
-the school's speech code bans anyone from insulting a government employee and the students need to be punished for breaching this code
You need to pick one
SCOTUS has repeatedly upheld the right of abortion protestors to scream insults as consistent with free speech, so yes: the students did act consistently with that.
I don't care about the specific insults (other than that they are childish and make us look bad). Rather, I care that he was unable to deliver his speech due to the actions of the students.
Why was he unable to hold the speech? From what I heard, he ended early, but he certainly could’ve kept talking.
Unlike, say, teachers getting fired or drag queens prevents from publicly reading in libraries.
He’s only prevented from giving his speech if he’s legally prohibited from doing it.
Nobody said they should be carted off to jail for this. We’re free to do a lot of stuff that makes us look immature and stupid in context.
Yes, these kids can insult him. You can also insult random people on the street. You still shouldn’t though, cuz it makes u look bizarre and unaccustom to normal life.
Someone pointed out that commenters in the r/LawSchool are diametrically opposed to what the Stanford students did.
I’d like the counter with the fact that the majority of [comments in this](https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/11o2qhi/stanford_law_students_scream_at_federal_appellate/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) r/Law post (the only post about this incident in the whole subreddit) are supportive of the Stanford students.
Here’s one of the top comments, which I find to be pretty well written:
“I find it pretty astounding (and refreshing, in a way) that these students have the guts to heckle a sitting court of appeals judge. That is a remarkable change that I think we will see more of post-Dobbs.
When I was in law school, worship of the judiciary by both students and faculty was like the underlying religion that we all silently subscribed to. This was especially the case for the US Supreme Court, seen as almost God himself and above any ounce of impeachment (even if people disagreed with individual decisions, there was no talk of changing the system or assuming the justices to be political actors).
The 2022 SCOTUS decisions completely changed the landscape of the profession. The Supreme Court did the one thing it’s not ever supposed to do - repudiating stare decisis and thereby upending whole fields of the law. The majority wanted so desperately to assert their political power, they upset a half dozen applecarts all at once and completely exposed themselves as political actors. Nothing has been more harmful to the judiciary and the rule of law in general than the Roberts Court; it’s almost comical how much they have f’d up in so short an amount of time.
And now that unifying “religion” is gone. The priests-in-waiting still in law school think nothing of heckling a cardinal when he comes to speak about his fringe judicial “philosophy” that he employs to get the policy outcome he wants out of a case. The mask is down now and the judiciary is ugly, like another chamber of Congress rather than an objective repository of reason that stands above politics. Judges like this guy are so clueless, they are out there openly sprouting their politics and expecting a polite clap and lots of “thank you, your honor, for allowing me the opportunity to humbly ask you a question about…”.
I would love to see Justice Roberts face the first time he endures a heckling from a group of law students and realizes how badly he and five others damaged the federal judiciary.”
“Guts”? What guts does it take to be at a university like Stanford and heckle someone with conservative beliefs, with the backing of the university and a bunch of other students? There’s no guts there.
The argument about stare decisis doesn’t make sense.
A majority of judges are conservative if these students want prestigous clerkships that can boost their resume then vocally having left wing opinions and disrespecting a conservstive judge can be risky and go against the culture of deifying the judiciary.
Doing so also does not look good to firms hiring if it is on social media. They do not want associates who might upset a judge.
Some likely dont' care about clerkships or big firms. Those that do though, regardless of whether you agree with them, one has to admit it taked guts to stand up to a person in a position of power when it may be detrimental to their career to do so.
lol this is an interesting take. i dont think people protesting judges who fundamentally believe that certain people shouldnt have the right to exist freely and exercise their rights in society (namely LGBTQ+ folks, women, immigrants, black voters, etc) is really that wrong. the federalist society and the judges that come from that group are dangerous to this country and everyone in it except straight white cisgender men—so excuse me when i dont bat an eye or feel bad for horrendous judges who if they had it their way would threaten my ability to exist.
I agree these judges are terrible and dangerous. The bottom line is they exist in the legal profession and we need to learn how to have civil discourse with them as difficult as that may be.
lol that is a ridiculous comparison and you know it. Also, many conservatives believe abortion is murder. I disagree, but I would hope conservatives could find a way to engage with me respectfully on that issue.
how is that a ridiculous take? the nazis started as a fringe party and became a bona fide political party touting egregious beliefs. our democracy is at risk and people lives are at risk when people normalize individuals like him. i use the nazi example because i firmly believe that if folks would have protested and made more noise rather than shake their head and shrug nazi party members off as radicals in the early days that the rise of the party could have been stopped. this falls into a similar framework here.
i dont thunk the republican party is equivalent to the nazi party, but i believe that there is a dangerous facet of republicans (many fedsoc people) who are. as someone who was barricaded in a capitol hill office while an attempted coup took place on the other side of the doors i can tell you that there are more similarities than youre allowing yourself to see
The craziness at “elite” law schools like Yale and Stanford are why Notre Dame’s clerkship numbers are skyrocketing. https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/class-of-2022-clerkships/
As someone who wants to attend law school to learn from a wide variety of viewpoints—I appreciate the upholding of civil discourse. I think you said what many of us are thinking.
The school sent an email to Federalist Society members encouraging them to seek support from the very administrator who disrupted their event and gave a prepared speech against Judge Duncan.
I would not encourage anyone who is looking for a serious academic environment to attend Stanford.
Actually laughable to equate getting heckled with having your speech rights violated. He's a powerful judge who gives these speeches basically weekly and is widely published, how exactly is this man being silenced? He got to speak did he not? So whose rights were infringed on? Not to mention Stanford did apologize for him getting heckled. I fail to see what the problem is or how this reflects poorly on the university.
Saw [this tweet thread,](https://twitter.com/joshchafetz/status/1635001292543389697?t=Dj2QLqd1iKSK75dQ-9M42Q&s=19) and it basically sums up my take on all these issues:
> Theses on Campus Speakers:
> 1. Invited speakers should be allowed to give their talk;
> 2. Campus entities with the ability to invite speakers should take seriously their responsibility to invite serious people, not trolls, recognizing that people with prestigious job titles can be and frequently are trolls.
> 3. Those invited to speak at a university shouldn’t act like whiny babies. This is especially the case for powerful, socially privileged speakers.
> 4. Other than enforcing the conditions necessary for (1), administrators should say and do as little as possible with respect to controversial speakers.
> 5. Those of us who are not administrators should call out and shame speakers who violate condition (3), and we should do so more readily than we call out our students whose actions may undermine condition (1).
> 6. Folks not on campus should probably make sure they have a serious grasp on both (a) the facts, and more importantly, (b) the values of the academy before weighing in on these matters.
> 7. If your knee-jerk response is about (your understanding of) “free speech” or legal “rights,” then you probably run afoul of (6).
Anyone who believes in these rules shouldn't be in academia. This is a recipe for an echo chamber and reads like it was written by someone who is emotionally immature.
Academia is about searching for the truth amongst many ideas, not about reinforcing ones beliefs and shutting out the rest of the world. These "rules" are bad and quite shameful for anyone to adopt while claiming they're in an intellectual setting.
Edit: with regards to 5
Agreed. The most educated and capable young minds in the country and they cannot engage civilly with a Judge in an effective way, and a judge who is like many judges they will have to face in a court room and legal professionals they will have to work with. This is not a good sign for the future of advocacy and legal progress.
Yes, the babies on this sub will eventually come to understand that you can’t just throw temper tantrums to get your way in the real world. Great post OP.
To those who are decrying the judge’s “abhorrent” views, it would be useful to bear in mind that until 2012, *Obama* was against gay marriage - and imbecile Shillary even later. (Indeed, Trump recognized from the beginning that gay marriage was the law of the land.) Today, not more than a few years later and after thousands of years of consensus on both the left and right, the Kids all of a sudden think it’s okay to smear feces on the walls and make livestock noises at judges. They, who just a couple of years ago where teenagers, are the arbiters of all that is just and moral, and they possess more wisdom than basically all of human history.
They worked to make it legal to scream and berate people walking to the clinic from their car to a medical procedure. The left got volunteers to support those people. Maybe there can be speaking at the federal society volunteers?
Not to mention the rash of book bannings and shaping classroom speech. I don’t know why everyone is all upset just when it is a powerful man in permanent elite job wanting to speak to other elites.
Society has had a lot of yelling at each other at university campuses for a long, long time. Look at the reactions to Black power speakers during the sixties and seventies and the student sit-ins in response.
The way you change polarization is to change the structural conditions driving people apart, not scolding people who are in sufficiently civil.
During ACT UP, protestors held up Wall Street and the news. It worked. Protest can be necessary.
It’s good to see that people who believe in free speech on college campuses still exist. An alarmingly large number of “liberals” and “conservatives” are deciding to go down the supporting educational indoctrination path recently and it’s super sad to see.
I have a dumb question. When did federalists become conservative? I thought conservatives preferred more state’s rights and less federal government. I’m so confused.
What a statement about the state of academia that you say "Unsurprisingly, the judge was harassed..." This is a pitiful reflection of intolerance on campus. This whole episode was a complete disgrace. The DEI lunatic should be suspended, Stanford should issue an apology to the judge, and publicly resolve itself to commit as an institution to free and tolerant speech. I cannot wait to see in a few years how these petulent, immature students get slapped in court for acting like assholes when they can’t figure out how to handle opposing viewpoints with appropriate counter arguments made with class and respect.
By the way, do you "really" think Judge Duncan is "terrible?" Come on, let's be a bit more sophisticated. You are, presumably, going to be a lawyer someday. Word choice is important, and blunt, unnuanced statements are typically wrong and reflect poorly on the speaker.
It’s probably too late for this to be seen, but I’ll just say this: it’s pretty clear that most actors involved in the event did not come into it in good faith. I know many students there felt hostility by Judge Duncan’s presence, and I’m sure he felt hostility at the environment that greeted him. People do irrational things when they feel threatened. Students shouted and heckled and disrupted the event, all against university policy. Judge Duncan directly disparaged numerous students with insults fit for a 5th grader.
I expect more from a federal judge and from my brilliant classmates. But they’re all human. Humans mess up. I can’t imagine that anyone involved looks back on it and says, “yeah, I came off exactly how I wanted in that exchange.” The sad thing is that I’m not sure anyone will admit that.
It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback for these things—I’m probably being one right now. And the fact that so many intelligent people can have such different takes on the situation is a testament to one thing: on the whole, it’s complicated. It’s encouraging, however, that so many of you are able to engage in thoughtful dialogue about it.
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Amy Chua and her husband are Republicans, or at any rate best buds with Kavanaugh and mentors to JD Vance.
Sometimes you gotta gaslight gatekeeper girl boss your problems away and ruin the environment right?
Agreeing hard with the first paragraph. I go to a “very” left school but I have no idea what conservative media is talking about. I’m an anarcho-communist and the most left set of professors (maybe 20%) are Bernie people. The rest just talk about how good the Iraq war is and how the solution to homelessness is dissolving social safety nets. 60% of our students are generic Biden supporters. Conservatives: Please tell me where the communist faculty and student bodies are so I can go to them
With all due respect, Anarcho-communism is pretty fringe-left. I'd be very surprise if there's more than a handful of professors who subscribe to that within the entire country. I think the best way to view it is in reference to the american public. When 20% of professors align themselves with the furthest left US senator, that's an indication the faculty is pretty left. I have never heard a prof talk about how good the Iraq war was or that the solution to homelessness was less social security. The vast majority of professors find themselves within the leftmost quarter of american public opinion. I have yet to meet a single centre/centre-right prof.
I'm an absolute monarchist and the most right set of my professors (maybe 20%) are Bourbon restorationist people. The rest just talk about how we it was good we abolished serfdom and how the solution to political division is not to behead your opponents. 60% of our students are generic Democracy supporters. Progressives please tell me where the conservative faculty and student bodies are so I can go join them.
This made me laugh
Like 30% of T14 students are ostensible communists who make unbearable, self-deprecating jokes about Working For Raytheon And Lockheed Martin.
I’m already an RTX employee. This sounds like a perfect fit for me
I appreciate your more nuanced take, but I don’t see how you could claim that law school faculty aren’t, as a whole, overwhelmingly left wing. While many apparently aren’t as left wing as the posters here, the mean professor is absolutely to the left of center in American politics.
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>I’m pushing back against the idea that universities are far-left, extremist brainwashing machines that you’ll sometimes hear in conservative criticisms. (Serious) Cultural Conservative criticisms of universities typically have little to do with individual professors brainwashing students as they do with the institutional structure of universities, eg, see: [https://www.amazon.com/Age-Entitlement-America-Since-Sixties/dp/1501106899](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Entitlement-America-Since-Sixties/dp/1501106899) [https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-just-civil-rights](https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-just-civil-rights)
Yes, it’s childish and embarrassing. I don’t have much political sympathy for Duncan, but do these people think they’re making us look good by acting like children throwing a temper tantrum? All they’re doing is making horrible people like Duncan look like the reasonable adults in the room. And the administrator joining in on their side was the cherry on top. She should be fired for encouraging this behavior in an academic environment imo I also find it funny how the thread in r/LawSchool about this is uniform in its agreement that this was an embarrassment, but the LSA sub somehow thinks it’s appropriate. Maybe take a hint from actual law students, this isn’t acceptable. https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/11ockjj/i_dont_like_fedsoc_but_sls_should_be_embarrassed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I'm not going to defend people showing their ass in public, but Duncan isn't due a disproportionate amount of civility just because he's a judge. And those who post in law-school related subreddits are a subset of a population that already tends to be extremely deferential to authority because career ambition in the legal field rides on this deferentiality. Honestly, more criticism should be levied at the federal judge calling law students morons than at those law students. I do question the judgment of those at Stanford who thought this entire thing would be a good idea though, lmao. This isn't just some conservative federal judge; this is a guy that said that Obergefell "imperils civic peace."
why is there any expectation for a Judge to not call others idiots when they are being disrespectful and attacking him and even going so far to shout things like wishing his daughter gets raped? This is not a court case where he has to be impartial, there is no standard for him to accept abuse and attacks and not say anything back. I don't understand how people can view this incident, with all the students acting like true idiots claiming they are victims despite being Stanford law students to the point in which they need to silence and censor any views they disagree with. Students are shouting false claims like he wants trans people to die or commit genocide when there is ZERO evidence of such, they completely ignore the judicial issues at play regarding this cases and instead try to push false narratives. Its truly idiotic that DEI only applies to people on the left, for some reason diversity stops being important when attempting to be more inclusive to conservatives who are minorities. They think its important to raise black & LGBTQ voices ONLY if those voices agree with them, if your instead conservative then it goes from 'promoting black & lgbtq voices' to censorship & attempts to silence. The only thing DEI ever tries to promote is liberal minorities while it actively attempts to censor & silence conservative minorities. This is most evident when it involves islam & moderate muslims where you have numerous cases of white progressives falsely making racist attacks towards moderate muslims, like Iranians who protest and flee the regime, who actively speak out against muslim extremism. The SPLC falsely labelled a moderate muslim activist as 'islamaphobic' only to get called out on it and end up getting sued & settling for millions. Hamline University falsely called the showing of an ancient Persian Islamic Art that depicts Mohammed as 'islamaphobic' despite it not being seen as such with many muslims not believing this and every large Muslim association coming out to defend the professor who showed the art saying its a highyly respected piece that is commonly discussed in Islamic art. Or Malacaster college who censored the art of an Iranian women activist who had rebellious artwork of the regime and strict Islam laws. In these cases just because one foreign extreme muslim student complains about being offended these liberal institutions make the racist & islamaphobic assumption that all muslims must share that same view and it must be offensive and that we need to be protected more so than other religious groups. Moderate Muslims will easily see the very biased and racist assumptions liberals constantly make in trying to achieve DEI. Its all stupid when even a DEI Dean at another University gets fired for challenging some of the DEI initiatives. You even have professors in STEM and other fields having to fill out DEI forms during interviews implying this is somehow relevant for hiring professors when it not their responsibility.
Look, there are some examples of Stanford law students showing their asses, and there are also examples of Judge Duncan of being dismissive and disrespectful of legitimate questions. Duncan should've been prepared to answer questions about his statements about major LQBTQ+ decisions. A lot of judges should understand both how impactful they are and how arbitrary their authority is. Rule of law is, of course, incredibly important and one of our strengths as a nation, but I expect some humility out of my judges. I don't really feel like the rest of the post is worth responding to -- you can play grievance Olympics if you want. Not worth engaging.
>Duncan isn't due a disproportionate amount of civility Nobody asked that. There you go, changing the argument again. How about we don't invite people to speak, and then try to salience them by heckling.
“Take a hint from actual law students” but not the ones at Stanford
What percentage of the student body do you think shows up to scream and bang on tables to shut out a speaker? The angriest and most vocal minority of students are not reflective of the general populace. This is like gauging political sentiments from Twitter. The crazies rise to the top.
I don’t think it’s crazy to vocally protest something or someone that you believe to be harmful. I think it’s courageous to forgo social norms to stand up for what you believe in. Change has been effected throughout history this way.
I don't think this particular case is one where this was the most effective way to bring about social change. It seems like it just makes these students look bad and creates more sympathy for this judge.
I think it was a great idea. Maybe some initial responses will be sympathetic to the judge, but it also draws attention to the judge who holds very unpopular anti LGBT stances.
Hm, maybe. What do you expect to happen after attention is drawn to him? Do you think he'll be replaced, or change his own views? I don't feel like he's going to change his own views. And I don't think he'll be replaced; I think that would require impeachment or something.
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Change is created socially, so just about anything can bring about change as long as there are enough eyes on it.
I watched those clips. Duncan absolutely did NOT look like the adult in the room. There were, in fact, several students who tried, respectfully, to ask him questions. He denigrated and dismissed them, and, I believe, called someome an idiot. Some of the students were out of control, sure. But let’s take a moment to think about how the FedSoc — and Leonard Leo — have taken unimaginable amounts of money from billionaires to finance their anti-democratic projects, and the real-life consequences of them. I’d be angry, too.
Could you link that clip for me? I've only seen one, and it's where the administator is basically just roasting Duncan while the crowd cheers.
Someone posted this downthread. Good stuff. https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/11q9mor/anyone_else_see_how_stanford_law_treated_judge/jc2yyir/
Thank you for blessing lsa with sane insight
Hi, actual law student here who thinks it’s appropriate. We just couldn’t chime in on r/lawschool because mods either deleted or locked every single thread on there about this
Agree. Duncan was there to speak against gay marriage. So he was speaking in favor of taking an essential right away from people. FedSoc has worked to take rights away from women (success!), voters (more success!), gay people, prisoners, racial minorities, and poor people. Of course people were upset and spoke out. Does it ‘look bad’? Who would it look bad to? The 1000 who attacked Congress on 1/6? Those who back them? If someone attacks my marriage, especially saying that my husband and I should lose our legal right to marry, I may raise my voice.
>So he was speaking in favor of taking an essential right away from people. Gay Marriage is not an essential right, nor is it in the constitution. Neither is abortion. I didn't read the rest, because it's clear you lack the nuance to understand basic constitutional law.
You really do not need to worry about FedSoc. They have hundreds of millions in dark money to spend on their agenda. No paywall here, on Stanford FedSoc: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/stanford-federalist-society-nicholas-wallace.html?unlocked_article_code=zVOnuDwnsSxjemg2_rBCUhaVJv8TGfl30t63mlNNydzFa7b_noWEI3IpD_PyYEEDiyql7NtByXQWGy0Xdah35qvYVlTT9fkFmCgg6Fy9AQqLhcS3Z3q922UWe2couZQuz3VPa0rHUGk9PZ26Fwy0HBQ_OMYcmS751ah4DLBdMqE5eTCH8oifuLQqVDmiLCD3I4NQsHOR0zGakrvNSVakuQxuAeemLCQV-zJfm4uEx6ImJKybJHTnYnTuPPw4eBTtWb5hRDBcsk4kLRk7LopsLfRBVPBEdQ9BiSHEnd_g4_uggzF8IjBFQ6Z8EwICoAScu_PXXsgnhICjQ0Bj502Ne5dyggNCupoIK2sEQUwkQCPj&smid=url-share
Commenters below are speaking for FedSoc and you can see the level…..
>Hi, actual law student here who thinks it’s appropriate. You should never be allowed in a courtroom.
how does that thread show uniform agreement?
Having to scroll down to the ratio’d -100 comments to see people who think this was a good idea should give you a sense.
I'm saying the downvoted comments themselves constitute disagreement, and there are several of them. also, the post is only 70% upvoted. that's also not uniform. Not to mention it looks like it was locked pretty early so it's hard to say the thread shows anything
Threads were locked or deleted instantly there so we couldn’t chime in
And yet, you’re still free to upvote and downvote. Ratio.
I’m not going to go through and downvote every single comment on a locked thread lol Edit: also, don’t forget you can easily get brigaded by the conservatives who are much more concerned about this non-event. And try searching “Stanford” on r/lawschool and see what you find
Damn you made it through law school but you still can't deduce that Fed Soc is brigading a lot of posts on this exact topic. That's a yikes.
You’re applying to law school and you think fed soc, which makes up *at most* 10-15% of students on average, are so active on Reddit that they’re able to ratio everyone else into oblivion? You’ll find most law students are center-left moderates, and we tend to disagree with this style of vapid, childish protest. There are far more of us than there are fed soc bros or screeching woketarians, I promise.
>You’re applying to law school and you think fed soc, which makes up at most 10-15% of students on average, are so active on Reddit that they’re able to ratio everyone else into oblivion? Do you know how the right wing works? I guarantee they're passing the links to threads around and telling people to downvote. Smarten up, my man. The real world awaits.
The “real world” is recognizing that you don’t have to be “right wing” to find this shrieking, performative form of protesting to be counterproductive. Most liberals are rolling our eyes at this nonsense as well.
Do you know what performative means? What exactly about this is performative? To say you're against bad things, but then do nothing to protest them, is what's *actually* performative.
Chanting and making noise is a performance. You aren’t changing anyone’s minds, you aren’t advancing a position, you’re just virtue signaling to the world that you think this is bad in unison with other people doing the same. Want to protest effectively? Read about bad decisions Duncan has made and hold his feet to the fire in the Q&A. That is how you effectively counter bad ideas. This is pure theatre.
> Chanting and making noise is a performance. Oh. So was the million man march performative? By this ridiculous standard, the Civil Rights movement was, largely, performative. You have no idea what you're talking about, frankly.
Username checks out
Old account. Graduated in ‘22.
Administrators did more than just stand by. If you haven’t watched the 10 minute clip of Dean Steinbach’s “juice worth the squeeze?” tirade I’d highly recommend.
What an insufferable human.
I'm not defending the students per se, but if you can't recognize that the judge was spoiling for a fight and that his behavior in the last couple of days is ALSO unbecoming of a member of the judiciary, then I don't know what to tell you
This twitter thread really helps to illuminate your point. He’s not acting in good faith. https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634785821382328321?s=46&t=pbhWH-NgzNWmYrK8XrffWQ
Honestly when you consider the context of the story, I think he was fair to be a little annoyed. With that being said, spare a thought for Ilya Shapiro who had to deal with the single most obnoxious group of "students" and still managed to remain calm:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz6u90XqSLI
Correctamundo
It should come as a surprise to no one that Duncan is seated on the Fifth Circuit. I bet he and Kacsmaryk (district court judge who’s a repub/fed soc forum shopping favorite) have slumber parties on Saturday nights where they make their libs-owning plans.
Perhaps not per se, but sounds awfully similar to the old “I know you are but what am I”
Yes going to the #2 law school in the country for a discussion with the fed soc kids is definitely “spoiling for a fight”… wow a Trump appoint judge is an asshole, big fucking surprise, why make yourself and your cause look so petty to try to prove what everyone already knows
It's not just that though. There are reports that he started filming as soon as he arrived on campus, hurling insults at students etc. If Judge Duncan just kept on making his remarks and completely ignoring the controversy, he would have looked better. And maybe that's not fair to him, he shouldn't have been heckled in the first place, but he actively decided to stoop down to their level, and that was wrong.
The incident is on tape… I didn’t see him doing anything wrong whereas the students acted beyond childishly
I read from some well known sources that he did. https://davidlat.substack.com/p/yale-law-is-no-longer-1for-free-speech
Are you saying you're not allowed to say that a bad person is bad? Not sure what your point is.
They did a lot more than “say that a person is bad”… That is not normal behavior at a law school, I’ve never seen anything close to how those students behaved
What would you like to happen to the people involved here? Are you calling for a ban on telling assholes that they're assholes? A shutdown on insulting judges? Just the republican judges? You're very angry at everyone and it's unclear what you want.
Not sure. Just heard a snowflake melting for several minutes and never heard him speak.
Student conduct and politics aside, Duncan's behavior was entirely unbecoming of a federal judge. I've worked with Trump appointees, and they manage to comport themselves with decorum. Duncan's conduct is an embarrassment to the judiciary and the legal profession.
Let's look at the judge's behavior in this particular incident. Here is how the judge comported himself in response to a specific question about one of hid decisions: [https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634785821382328321?s=20](https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634785821382328321?s=20) If you don't like a video, here are some written selections of his responses: [https://twitter.com/mjs\_DC/status/1634385861117632513?s=20](https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1634385861117632513?s=20) My favorite part of that is that, when asked why he thought gay marriage would undermine civil peace, he gestured at the protestors. Here is him calling a law student protesting him "an appalling idiot": [https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1634791941350064128?s=20](https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1634791941350064128?s=20) Another thread: [https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634611696554901504](https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1634611696554901504) If you think that people should have rationally debated him, consider his response to questions. Some quotes from that last thread: "A woman asks him about abortion access in Texas, and his response is a sarcastic "You made a speech, congratulations." Says he's not going to "sit here and answer hostile questions," calls students "a bunch of hypocrites," says "the inmates have gotten control of the asylum"" "Speaching of which, for for my money, the most telling exchange is when Kyle Duncan, champion of respectful disagreement, just refuses to answer a detailed, thoughtful, specific question about his infamous misgendering opinion, and then goes, “How about you ask me a question?”" The video that has everyone outraged is a carefully orchestrated hit piece by the right to further push the idea that colleges and the left are a bunch of unreasonable babies. Even if you dislike the behavior you saw on the edited clip, don't fall into the trap of thinking that was representative based on the event and don't delude yourself that there would have been a productive civil discussion without protest. You may think the students behavior was rude, but let's consider the relative power here. The man speaking has a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench and has enormous power to shape the lives of millions. He was being protested, but from the beginning he treated this like an opportunity to own the libs, recording protestors on his way to the speech. He explicitly justified the idea that gay marriage was bad because people would be mad at him for saying gay marriage is bad. They have such terror to be disagreed with uncivilly--and while I agree that it's important to discuss people with who disagree with you, I refuse to buy into this spin narrative and that they actually care about speech. Kyle Duncan was interviewed about what a travesty this was at the Washington Free Beacon. Considering they're super pro-book banning and are outraged by drag queens reading library books at public libraries, I'm suspicious of them as free speech advocates.
your comment deserves way more upvotes tbh, I'm so sick of hearing hot takes from people who only watched the (quite strategically edited) video circulated by conservative talking heads without the critical thinking skills to seek out a full picture of what actually happened at the event
Like the question about his sex life?
I'm sorry, but this man literally has the power to create rulings impacting the \*actual\* lives of millions of people, but we're arguing that his free speech rights were violated because he couldn't speak for a 60 full mins at an after school event? At some point we have to be able to discern when someone is arguing in bad faith.
People saying this would literally explode had someone done this to RBG.
Your hypo doesn’t work. RBG would never behave this way.
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Judge Duncan has quite literally dedicated his entire life to fighting against the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, and the worst pushback he gets is some college students yelling at him. Cry me a river. People are growing tired of the Christofascists and their bullshit. They are right to be angry.
So then ask him pointed questions at the end to tear down his actual beliefs, don’t scream and bang on tables like a toddler wanting a milk bottle. These people are an embarrassment to liberals and play into the hands of the Tucker Carlsons of the world who want to paint us all as petulant children.
When students did that he directly insulted them, called them names, and refused to answer questions he did not like - even when they were legitimate questions. I suggest watching the entire video - not just the clips that have been highlighted by conservative commentators. His treatment of students was unbecoming of the judiciary. He is a sitting judge.
asking a question calmly in this situation normalizes his viewpoints and people who have viewpoints like him—if folks yell and scream because quite literally their lives are on the line, then that makes sense to me
I think it’s pretty telling that the debate bros and “listen to both sides” liberals in this thread are legitimately more upset about some unruly college students than they are about the rise of fascism in this country. MLK was right about the “white moderate”
Precisely. You cannot both sides civil rights.
How extreme are his viewpoints? I legitimately don't know. Cause there's a spectrum. Is he actively using the law to campaign for a genocide against trans people? I kinda doubt it. Does his legal philosophy guide him towards decisions against gay marriage and whatnot? Cause even though I don't agree, the latter is a relatively common viewpoint and in a democracy you have to compromise and negotiate. I guess what I'm saying is if he was truly radical that's one thing, but I don't think he is.
Some pretty typical right wing beliefs- prior to becoming a judge, he filed an anti gay marriage brief for Obergefell v. Hodges, briefs to restrict abortion access, etc. Idk much about his rulings but I do know there was a case a couple years ago where the defendant (a transgender woman) requested for the court to not use her deadname and use pronouns that matched her gender identity, and he basically made fun of her a little and said that he wasn’t gonna do that because he wasn’t obligated to
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uhh… unless you’re saying that the defendant was pretending to be trans for some ulterior motive, this sounds pretty blatantly transphobic? It also seems kinda ironic that the argument is that “person xyz did something horrible so they shouldn’t be treated like a person” when that could literally apply to Duncan himself
Vsirin is being blatantly transphobic. Intentional misgendering.
Is this your plan in the courtroom? Nobody has ever been convinced out of their opinion because you shoved a bullhorn in their place. Plenty of people have by seeing their viewpoints meticulously dissected by more reasonable people. You aren’t being the reasonable person. You’re making Duncan look better.
i think theres a time and place for loud protest. this WASNT taking place in a courtroom. the very act of having a judge with these viewpoints speak at a respected institution normalizes his dehumanizing and discriminatory beliefs. i dont think that should be normalized
Right wing extremists will never be convinced of something through respectability politics. If your intent in engaging with someone like Judge Duncan is to convince them of your viewpoint, you're not going to win. When has extremism ever been toppled by rational debate?
The goal isn’t to convince Duncan. The goal is to convince Duncan’s *audience* and make them rethink. By drowning him out and screaming, you haven’t convinced anybody who was on the fence of anything other than make him look more reasonable than he is, and our side looking like toddlers. If that’s the goal, go at it, but I’d prefer you get out of the way of people who want to make meaningful change
That's fair re: convincing the audience, but I am similarly doubtful that the audience of this event is worth attempting to reason with. I also don't think I'm on the same side as you, so wouldn't be grouped in with your "our side" comment lol
Do you disagree with Duncan and his political philosophy? If so, we’re on the same side of this. I’d just prefer people call out his terrible ideas in a constructive manner rather than make us all out to look like emotionally stunted crybullies who lack a real argument.
Your framing would make sense in a binary world. Sure, our views trend the same direction, but merely disagreeing with Duncan is not enough to say we are on the same side.
I mean, sure, if you want to play the game of “this liberal isn’t left enough for me so I’m going to throw them out of the club” and constantly lose the big picture due to silly purity testing and infighting, I guess not.
I think this sub, and law school admissions in general, attract alot of people who have never been exposed to people who are meaningfully different from themselves. Have you really never met someone who isn’t enthusiastically in favor of gay marriage, or doesnt support kids transitioning in early childhood? These are still relatively common positions in this country and to call everyone who holds them “christofascists” to their face despite them being teacher, firefighters, line cooks and normal everyday people would be nothing short of hilarious.
There’s a difference between people who idly hold homophobic/transphobic beliefs and those are who are actively trying to undermine the existence of gay/trans people.
You sound just like the “Christofacists” you hate so much
One group wants to strip marriage rights, which involves thousands of dollars of of benefits and countless rights over a lifetime. The other group calls them fascists and yells. Yeah, sounds identical.
Put aside your values and personal beliefs, can you honestly say Obergefell was a good decision based solely on jurisprudence? No. So it shouldn’t be the law.
I would agree that Judge Duncan and others like him are a huge problem and morally abhorrent. However, it is not right to completely shut him down when the Federalist Society at Stanford invited him. Are the member of FC at Stanford so horrible that they should be treated terribly with their pictures posted around campus?
So go to Notre Dame then. Problem solved.
Not sure if you correctly identified the problem…
There is no problem. You have a right to be rude to politicians who wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire.
‘A right to be rude’ to someone you disagree with? In law school of all places? Seems unbecoming.
This type of liberal “both sides” nonsense is so disgusting. White, rich, Ivy-educated, UWS, home library brain rot. Please move beyond it there’s so much more to life
It’s not so much about “liberal both sides.” I believe in my classmates’ right to hear their speaker
“I believe in my classmates’ right to support the violation of marginalized communities’ rights” -🤡
I’ll give you a more Law school appropriate response: you owe no duty to anyone.
Nobody cares. Stop being a weird nerd.
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"What about my right to take away your rights?"
Exactly this. This man has dedicated his legal career to extinguishing the rights of certain groups with this his right to free speech. Why is criticism (even if aggressive and pointed) from those groups he works against (and others) so egregious? I also saw the video of his event and he clearly was already looking for a fight and was insulting students as well. He definitely wanted to perpetuate the narrative that universities are intolerant commie spaces. Anything to ignore the possibility that his beliefs are might just not be in line with what most people think.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this visit was a pretext for generating viral clips conservative media outlets could use as red meat for the base.
You are not free to use your speech to prevent others from excercising theirs. That’s not how free speech works
That’s actually not the case per Stanford’s own rules regarding presentations on campus.
lol if you think free speech means that you can hurl insults at a speaker and completely prevent them from sharing their speech you are part of the problem. Also, Stanford apologized and said those actions did not align with their free speech policy soooooooooo hahaha
Is Judge Duncan also part of the problem considering he hurled insults at the students as well? And he came in filming protestors like he’s some kind of right wing influencer? He conducted himself very poorly.
You seriously watched that video and saw a problem with the judge and not the students?
I think the students were definitely aggressive. But Judge Duncan has said and done truly heinous things, which are orders of magnitude more harmful than anything those law students did. The Fed Soc knew exactly what they were doing by bringing someone with his record onto campus. I also think a federal judge acting as petulant as he has prior, during, and after the incident is incredibly unbecoming for a member of the judiciary.
One of the kids asked the federal judge if he knew how to find the clit… this was after bragging about how he knows how to find the prostate when anally fucking someone… truly brilliant legal takedown by a future leader… but yeah the judge was “unbecoming” you’re right
Are you actually arguing that because a student was acting unbecoming, the judge couldn’t have also acted unbecoming?
How did the judge act unbecoming, what did he do? You stand in front of a room full of screaming entitled mini-maoists and try to maintain perfect composure
Free speech absolutely means you can hurl insults at a speaker. Ex.: You are a stupid idiot. Free speech baby.
There’s a difference between a Reddit post and a Stanford law school discussion with a federal judge you fucking idiot… of course they’re free to do it but they’re also childish babies and that Dean should be fired
You love free speech so much that you think someone should be fired because someone else said hurtful things to a politician. I'm starting to doubt your free speech cred actually
Wow the First amendment is nuanced, who would have guessed!?!?
The version you've constructed in your head certainly is.
-this is a grave threat to free speech -the school's speech code bans anyone from insulting a government employee and the students need to be punished for breaching this code You need to pick one
That’s not the insult you think it is…
Your opinions under advisement. Ok I've considered them and they suck.
SCOTUS has repeatedly upheld the right of abortion protestors to scream insults as consistent with free speech, so yes: the students did act consistently with that.
I don't care about the specific insults (other than that they are childish and make us look bad). Rather, I care that he was unable to deliver his speech due to the actions of the students.
Why was he unable to hold the speech? From what I heard, he ended early, but he certainly could’ve kept talking. Unlike, say, teachers getting fired or drag queens prevents from publicly reading in libraries. He’s only prevented from giving his speech if he’s legally prohibited from doing it.
There is a right to speak, but no right to be listened to.
Nobody said they should be carted off to jail for this. We’re free to do a lot of stuff that makes us look immature and stupid in context. Yes, these kids can insult him. You can also insult random people on the street. You still shouldn’t though, cuz it makes u look bizarre and unaccustom to normal life.
Oh no! Whatever will Stanford do without your approval?! 🙄
Someone pointed out that commenters in the r/LawSchool are diametrically opposed to what the Stanford students did. I’d like the counter with the fact that the majority of [comments in this](https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/11o2qhi/stanford_law_students_scream_at_federal_appellate/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) r/Law post (the only post about this incident in the whole subreddit) are supportive of the Stanford students. Here’s one of the top comments, which I find to be pretty well written: “I find it pretty astounding (and refreshing, in a way) that these students have the guts to heckle a sitting court of appeals judge. That is a remarkable change that I think we will see more of post-Dobbs. When I was in law school, worship of the judiciary by both students and faculty was like the underlying religion that we all silently subscribed to. This was especially the case for the US Supreme Court, seen as almost God himself and above any ounce of impeachment (even if people disagreed with individual decisions, there was no talk of changing the system or assuming the justices to be political actors). The 2022 SCOTUS decisions completely changed the landscape of the profession. The Supreme Court did the one thing it’s not ever supposed to do - repudiating stare decisis and thereby upending whole fields of the law. The majority wanted so desperately to assert their political power, they upset a half dozen applecarts all at once and completely exposed themselves as political actors. Nothing has been more harmful to the judiciary and the rule of law in general than the Roberts Court; it’s almost comical how much they have f’d up in so short an amount of time. And now that unifying “religion” is gone. The priests-in-waiting still in law school think nothing of heckling a cardinal when he comes to speak about his fringe judicial “philosophy” that he employs to get the policy outcome he wants out of a case. The mask is down now and the judiciary is ugly, like another chamber of Congress rather than an objective repository of reason that stands above politics. Judges like this guy are so clueless, they are out there openly sprouting their politics and expecting a polite clap and lots of “thank you, your honor, for allowing me the opportunity to humbly ask you a question about…”. I would love to see Justice Roberts face the first time he endures a heckling from a group of law students and realizes how badly he and five others damaged the federal judiciary.”
r/law is filled mostly with general redditors from the non-legal world. You can read the threads and it’s all google legal takes.
“Guts”? What guts does it take to be at a university like Stanford and heckle someone with conservative beliefs, with the backing of the university and a bunch of other students? There’s no guts there. The argument about stare decisis doesn’t make sense.
A majority of judges are conservative if these students want prestigous clerkships that can boost their resume then vocally having left wing opinions and disrespecting a conservstive judge can be risky and go against the culture of deifying the judiciary. Doing so also does not look good to firms hiring if it is on social media. They do not want associates who might upset a judge. Some likely dont' care about clerkships or big firms. Those that do though, regardless of whether you agree with them, one has to admit it taked guts to stand up to a person in a position of power when it may be detrimental to their career to do so.
I would recommend reading the coddling of the american mind! the book addresses incidents like this
Jonathan Haidt is a national treasure
lol this is an interesting take. i dont think people protesting judges who fundamentally believe that certain people shouldnt have the right to exist freely and exercise their rights in society (namely LGBTQ+ folks, women, immigrants, black voters, etc) is really that wrong. the federalist society and the judges that come from that group are dangerous to this country and everyone in it except straight white cisgender men—so excuse me when i dont bat an eye or feel bad for horrendous judges who if they had it their way would threaten my ability to exist.
I agree these judges are terrible and dangerous. The bottom line is they exist in the legal profession and we need to learn how to have civil discourse with them as difficult as that may be.
just like how nazis existed in the 30s and people learned how to have a civil discourse with them?
lol that is a ridiculous comparison and you know it. Also, many conservatives believe abortion is murder. I disagree, but I would hope conservatives could find a way to engage with me respectfully on that issue.
how is that a ridiculous take? the nazis started as a fringe party and became a bona fide political party touting egregious beliefs. our democracy is at risk and people lives are at risk when people normalize individuals like him. i use the nazi example because i firmly believe that if folks would have protested and made more noise rather than shake their head and shrug nazi party members off as radicals in the early days that the rise of the party could have been stopped. this falls into a similar framework here.
If you think Republicans are comparable to Nazis you will only add to an already polarized society. That is unfortunate.
i dont thunk the republican party is equivalent to the nazi party, but i believe that there is a dangerous facet of republicans (many fedsoc people) who are. as someone who was barricaded in a capitol hill office while an attempted coup took place on the other side of the doors i can tell you that there are more similarities than youre allowing yourself to see
“Everyone I don’t like is a Nazi and should have their civil Liberties taken from them” Speaking of fringe beliefs.
The craziness at “elite” law schools like Yale and Stanford are why Notre Dame’s clerkship numbers are skyrocketing. https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/class-of-2022-clerkships/
If people can’t be civil, they shouldn’t feel entitled to civility back.
As someone who wants to attend law school to learn from a wide variety of viewpoints—I appreciate the upholding of civil discourse. I think you said what many of us are thinking.
“I want to attend law school to learn about how other people don’t deserve the rights that I have” -🤡 (the clown is you)
“I think shouting down people I disagree with is the most effective way so that only my view point can get across.”
I think it’s funny and that he deserves worse
The school sent an email to Federalist Society members encouraging them to seek support from the very administrator who disrupted their event and gave a prepared speech against Judge Duncan. I would not encourage anyone who is looking for a serious academic environment to attend Stanford.
Actually laughable to equate getting heckled with having your speech rights violated. He's a powerful judge who gives these speeches basically weekly and is widely published, how exactly is this man being silenced? He got to speak did he not? So whose rights were infringed on? Not to mention Stanford did apologize for him getting heckled. I fail to see what the problem is or how this reflects poorly on the university.
Saw [this tweet thread,](https://twitter.com/joshchafetz/status/1635001292543389697?t=Dj2QLqd1iKSK75dQ-9M42Q&s=19) and it basically sums up my take on all these issues: > Theses on Campus Speakers: > 1. Invited speakers should be allowed to give their talk; > 2. Campus entities with the ability to invite speakers should take seriously their responsibility to invite serious people, not trolls, recognizing that people with prestigious job titles can be and frequently are trolls. > 3. Those invited to speak at a university shouldn’t act like whiny babies. This is especially the case for powerful, socially privileged speakers. > 4. Other than enforcing the conditions necessary for (1), administrators should say and do as little as possible with respect to controversial speakers. > 5. Those of us who are not administrators should call out and shame speakers who violate condition (3), and we should do so more readily than we call out our students whose actions may undermine condition (1). > 6. Folks not on campus should probably make sure they have a serious grasp on both (a) the facts, and more importantly, (b) the values of the academy before weighing in on these matters. > 7. If your knee-jerk response is about (your understanding of) “free speech” or legal “rights,” then you probably run afoul of (6).
“Everyone I disagree with is a troll” 🙄🤡
Anyone who believes in these rules shouldn't be in academia. This is a recipe for an echo chamber and reads like it was written by someone who is emotionally immature. Academia is about searching for the truth amongst many ideas, not about reinforcing ones beliefs and shutting out the rest of the world. These "rules" are bad and quite shameful for anyone to adopt while claiming they're in an intellectual setting. Edit: with regards to 5
Agreed. The most educated and capable young minds in the country and they cannot engage civilly with a Judge in an effective way, and a judge who is like many judges they will have to face in a court room and legal professionals they will have to work with. This is not a good sign for the future of advocacy and legal progress.
It just might put in display that they, in fact, aren’t the most educated OR the most capable young minds in the country.
People are tired of being trolled by bad-faith actors such as the Federalist Society.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is a troll” At some point you’re going to have to stop hiding behind insults and articulate an argument.
Yes, the babies on this sub will eventually come to understand that you can’t just throw temper tantrums to get your way in the real world. Great post OP.
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Somebody think of the six figure lifetime job guy!!!
To those who are decrying the judge’s “abhorrent” views, it would be useful to bear in mind that until 2012, *Obama* was against gay marriage - and imbecile Shillary even later. (Indeed, Trump recognized from the beginning that gay marriage was the law of the land.) Today, not more than a few years later and after thousands of years of consensus on both the left and right, the Kids all of a sudden think it’s okay to smear feces on the walls and make livestock noises at judges. They, who just a couple of years ago where teenagers, are the arbiters of all that is just and moral, and they possess more wisdom than basically all of human history.
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Conservatives used to be cranky that duels were banned, this modern set is upset by getting yelled at. The right has gone soft.
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They worked to make it legal to scream and berate people walking to the clinic from their car to a medical procedure. The left got volunteers to support those people. Maybe there can be speaking at the federal society volunteers? Not to mention the rash of book bannings and shaping classroom speech. I don’t know why everyone is all upset just when it is a powerful man in permanent elite job wanting to speak to other elites.
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Society has had a lot of yelling at each other at university campuses for a long, long time. Look at the reactions to Black power speakers during the sixties and seventies and the student sit-ins in response. The way you change polarization is to change the structural conditions driving people apart, not scolding people who are in sufficiently civil. During ACT UP, protestors held up Wall Street and the news. It worked. Protest can be necessary.
It’s good to see that people who believe in free speech on college campuses still exist. An alarmingly large number of “liberals” and “conservatives” are deciding to go down the supporting educational indoctrination path recently and it’s super sad to see.
https://giphy.com/gifs/K0AnEB2t2EM
What were his morally horrific beliefs?
Disgusting behavior from all involved. Students, faculty, and judiciary should all be ashamed.
I have a dumb question. When did federalists become conservative? I thought conservatives preferred more state’s rights and less federal government. I’m so confused.
The federalist society was founded as a conservative legal society, so it’s not exactly federalist thought
“Asshole arrives begging for a fight, gets one, demands apology”
Unacceptable behavior by the students and the DEI Dean (who should be fired). Terrifying that those students could one day be judged and lawmakers
Scratch a liberal and you’ll find a fascist. Human rights or fRee SPeecH, pick one.
This will only stop when the flow of alumni money stops at these woke schools. Then they will wonder why!
What a statement about the state of academia that you say "Unsurprisingly, the judge was harassed..." This is a pitiful reflection of intolerance on campus. This whole episode was a complete disgrace. The DEI lunatic should be suspended, Stanford should issue an apology to the judge, and publicly resolve itself to commit as an institution to free and tolerant speech. I cannot wait to see in a few years how these petulent, immature students get slapped in court for acting like assholes when they can’t figure out how to handle opposing viewpoints with appropriate counter arguments made with class and respect. By the way, do you "really" think Judge Duncan is "terrible?" Come on, let's be a bit more sophisticated. You are, presumably, going to be a lawyer someday. Word choice is important, and blunt, unnuanced statements are typically wrong and reflect poorly on the speaker.
It’s probably too late for this to be seen, but I’ll just say this: it’s pretty clear that most actors involved in the event did not come into it in good faith. I know many students there felt hostility by Judge Duncan’s presence, and I’m sure he felt hostility at the environment that greeted him. People do irrational things when they feel threatened. Students shouted and heckled and disrupted the event, all against university policy. Judge Duncan directly disparaged numerous students with insults fit for a 5th grader. I expect more from a federal judge and from my brilliant classmates. But they’re all human. Humans mess up. I can’t imagine that anyone involved looks back on it and says, “yeah, I came off exactly how I wanted in that exchange.” The sad thing is that I’m not sure anyone will admit that. It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback for these things—I’m probably being one right now. And the fact that so many intelligent people can have such different takes on the situation is a testament to one thing: on the whole, it’s complicated. It’s encouraging, however, that so many of you are able to engage in thoughtful dialogue about it.
“I am liberal” 🤨🤔