The William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale University presents
James Ho, Circuit Judge for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and Elizabeth Branch, Circuit Judge for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals:
”Is Free Speech Dead On Campus?”
In September, Circuit Judge for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals James Ho announced that he would no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law because of the school’s poor record on free speech. Ho called on other federal judges to take the same stand in favor of free speech on campus. 13 other federal judges quickly accepted his call, including Circuit Judge for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Elizabeth Branch.
Yale University Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Akhil Reed Amar will be moderating.
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Elizabeth L. Branch was appointed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in March of 2018. From 2012 to 2018, she served as a judge on the Court of Appeals of Georgia. Prior to her judicial service, she spent her entire private practice career in commercial litigation at Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP in Atlanta, from summer clerk to associate to partner. From 2004 to 2008, Judge Branch was a senior official in the Administration of President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. She served first as the Associate General Counsel for Rules and Legislation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and then as the Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U. S. Office of Management and Budget.
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only currently active professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service. Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in over 45 cases — tops among scholars under age 65. He regularly testifies before Congress at the invitation of both parties; and in surveys of judicial citations and/or scholarly citations, he typically ranks among America’s five most-cited mid-career legal scholars.
The event is open to the Yale community. There will be a livestream for those who can’t attend in person.
The Washington Free Beacon previewed the event.