A Yale Law School professor who criticized an awakened crowd of students who tried to shut down the free speech debate warned that truth had become out of place in the US rule of law.
Kate Stith, who moderated a debate between progressive and conservative guest speakers on March 10 and yelled at students to “grow up” when they protested the latest guest, said students showered insults on her for trying to stop the chaos.
On Monday, Stith spoke to Common Sense with Bari Weiss to warn that what happened at Yale was not an isolated incident.
“Law schools are in crisis,” she told reporter Aaron Sibarium. “The truth doesn’t really matter. The game is to show your virtue.
Yale Law School professor Kate Stith (pictured) warned that the future rule of law in the US will not be dictated by truth, but by public opinion
Stith moderated a free-speech debate at Yale Law School on March 10, where more than 100 students hinted at a conservative panelist and yelled at Stith.
Stith (second from right) told the students to “grow up” and respect the university’s free speech rule. The students said their protests were protected by freedom of speech.
The panel featured progressive Monica Miller (left) and conservative Christian Kristen Wagoner (right), both of whom yelled backstage, with Wagoner defending against insults when some students yelled “I’m going to fight you bitch.”
The March 10 incident involved about 120 Yale law students who were filmed yelling at Kristen Wagoner, a conservative Christian from the nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), during a debate with liberal humanist Monica Miller about free speech.
Protesters swore at the speaker, chanting “protect trans kids” and “shame, shame” throughout the law school building after police pulled Wagoner and her opponent out of the building’s debate.
One man yelled at Wagoner, “I’m going to fight you, bitch,” and Stit denounced the whole thing, trying to calm down until the campus police arrived.
Among those who see a tricky picture in law schools is New York Law School professor Rebecca Royfe, who teaches legal ethics.
Roif linked what happened at Yale, where the university refused to denounce student protests, to an error in legal sentencing where the judge could have given softer rulings because they are sympathetic to the defendants’ cause.
“Rewarding someone for having the right beliefs is almost as bad as punishing someone for the wrong ones,” she told Sibarium. “More importantly, a criminal justice system that does the former probably does the latter.”
NYLS professor Nadine Straussen, the first woman to head the American Civil Liberties Union, shared the dismay, denouncing what the Yale students had done.
“Undermining the representation of any unpopular speaker or idea compromises the freedom of any speaker or idea because the waves of popularity are constantly changing,” Straussen told Sibarium.
“How would you feel if a judge who has religious objections to abortion would give a lighter sentence to pro-life activists who attack clinic property or staff,” she asked, waking up the protesters.
Two days after the panel discussion, 417 students reportedly signed an open letter in support of “peaceful student protests” at the chaotic event.
The letter also claimed that the protesters were “threatened by the presence of the police”.
A Virginia corporate lawyer, who asked Sibarium to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job, agreed that the law now reflects who is currently in power and of public opinion.
“You see it in all the worst things we see in Donald Trump: ‘The law means what I say.’ The election was stolen because I lost,” the lawyer said, referring to the unsubstantiated but popular allegations of electoral fraud by former presidents.
“Once you move away from the idea that we are all people under the law, it becomes really important who is in power. It starts to feel like the rule of man rather than the rule of law.”
“It’s extremely aggressive,” the lawyer added.
Another anonymous attorney based in Washington, D.C., added that this mentality is already affecting law firms across the country, as lawyers now worry about the appearance of the cases they take on and how “woken up” they are to appear in front of their lawyers. colleagues.
“Partners are blinded by colleagues whom they consider to be liberals in their own image and likeness, but they are not,” Sibarium’s lawyer said.
The comrades want to burn this place down.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz (above), who was accused in 2014 of having sexual relations with an underage girl at Jeffrey Epstein’s various homes, compared what is happening now to the perils of 1950s McCarthyism.
Straussen added that it also led lawyers to feel they should self-censor tightrope walking to make sure they didn’t say anything that could be seen as remotely controversial.
“I actively censor myself,” she said. “I assume that every word, every facial expression, will be recorded and potentially shared around the world.
“I feel like I’m working in a freak show.”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who was accused in 2014 of having sexual relations with an underage girl at various Jeffrey Epstein homes, compared what is happening now to the perils of 1950s McCarthyism, adding that it is “a lot worse.”
“McCarthyism was a reflection of a dying, old way of thinking. They were not the future,” Dershowitz told Sibarium.
“But the people who today impose litmus tests on who they represent are the future.”