Short Take: Have Yale Law Students Suffered Enough?

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, legally wrong with Aaron Sibarium’s Washington Free Beacon expose on the reactions of certain Yale law students against their follow students and in conflict with what one would expect from a law student, in general, and a student at as elite a law school at Yale, in particular. After all, what law student would publicly say something like this?

While the intolerance and call for “unrelenting daily confrontation” with people who don’t share her political views would be unsurprising on the usual crazies on the street, would it be wrong to expect better of Yale Law Students? But Aaron names names and quotes the worst and ugliest Yale has to offer. If before it was some ranting among friends and classmates, it’s now part of a permanent record at the Free Beacon.

Orin Kerr challenged the appropriateness of taking law students (are they kids or adults?) and branding them as nutjobs who should never be admitted to practice law no less take up a seat at YLS in perpetuity.

Aaron, this article seems really inappropriate. These are students venting on social media. You're not only naming them, creating a permanent record of it, you're contacting their future employers to make sure they know, and contacting the students for "comment." /1

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) May 14, 2022

While irresponsible and irate law students caught at their lowest and worst point expressing intolerance and, perhaps, violence toward their classmates is bad enough that it should not be concealed because “they just dumb kids,” I share Orin’s sense that this is inappropriate. Yes, they are law students, and hence putative adults, although no one seriously believes that they’re mature enough to be in control of their impulses.

And this may not be just a transitory breach of propriety, but enough of a perspective on life that they may well engage in harm against fellow YLS students who commit the crime of heresy. Perhaps these expressions of outrage are warning signs that this person should not be an attorney, a judge, a senator, and dog catcher, and without spreading the word, no one will be aware of the damage these “elite” YLS students might do.

But then, maybe these are just dumb angry kids spewing childish nonsense. Maybe they will look back at their reaction, shake their collective heads and mutter, “what was I thinking?”

When Yale Law School exploded with Trap House Gate, it hung one of its students, a FedSoc member, out to dry. It named names. The administration not only abused its authority to coerce a confession, but it expressly threatened the publicly exposed student with the ruin of his future career. So why isn’t turnabout fair play?

The answer is a matter of choosing to be better, worse or the same as those who abuse their power to harm their ideological enemies. YLS was very wrong with its outrageous handling of the Trap House controversy, and if that was wrong, then is it not similarly wrong to taint these by naming them and creating a permanent record of their lunacy?

The question is not, as Orin notes, whether Aaron had the legal right to use images and name names, despite the student doing their best sovcit impression and announcing that they did not authorize the use of names or images. But the reporting took things a step beyond their insipid reaction.

“It’s not time for ‘reform,’” first-year law student Leah Fessler, a onetime New York Times freelancer, wrote on Instagram. “Democratic Institutions won’t save us.” It is unclear how Fessler will apply that view as a legal intern this summer for federal judge Lewis Liman. Judge Liman did not respond to a request for comment.

Reaching out to Judge Liman for comment, and thus making sure that he was both aware of what was said and that others would then know how to reacted to this news, might be good journalism, but it’s exceptionally damaging to a student and puts a judge in a terrible spot.

I can’t condemn Aaron for doing what he did. This is newsworthy. The students have no claim to privacy. And what they wrote is both disturbing and fundamentally inconsistent with what one would expect of any law student, no less a Yale law student. And still, I share Orin’s sense that this has gone too far, been too harmful and that too many young lives have become casualties of the culture war.