Judge James C. Ho: “Fighters, Climbers, and the War for the Judiciary”
I am proud to serve on the Board of Advisors of the Texas A&M Journal of Law & Civil Governance. My article, Bilateral Judicial Reform, was published in the inaugural issue, alongside contributions from Senator Mitch McConnell, Judge Reed O’Connor, and Judge James C. Ho. This past weekend, Judge Ho also delivered remarks at the journal’s banquet gala. I am happy to share Judge Ho’s speech, which will be published later in the journal.
Fighters, Climbers, and the War for the Judiciary
James C. Ho
We’re here to celebrate the launch of a new law journal. But as my law clerks have told me, there are over a thousand law reviews in Westlaw’s law review database. Why on earth do we need another?
How you answer that question may depend on how you view the legal academy—and how you think much of the academy views our country and our Constitution.
As Americans, we believe that we should be governed by the people—not by lawyers or law professors. We didn’t fight a Revolutionary War to replace one king in royal garb with hundreds of kings in judicial robes.
Our legal system should only decide legal disputes—not political ones. Political disagreements should be resolved through elections—and by officials directly accountable to the people.
In sum, our legal system is supposed to be politically neutral.
But would anyone seriously claim that the median academic or most legal elites are in fact politically neutral—and not systemically, institutionally biased against essentially half the country?
I would submit that therein lies the pitfalls—as well as the potential—for a new law journal.
I.
Three questions come to mind. First: Will this new law journal reinforce the pervasive bias of much of the legal academy—or resist it?
In FAIR v. Rumsfeld, a group of law professors and law schools claimed that they had a constitutional right to expel the United States military from all on-campus recruiting. They didn’t just lose—they lost unanimously before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last year, a group of law professors demanded that states disqualify President Trump from the 2024 ballot. Again, they didn’t just lose—they lost unanimously before the U.S. Supreme Court.
So you might conclude that an awful number of law professors aren’t very good at law.
But I think the problem is actually worse than that. What concerns me most is not when they lose—but when they win.
Because the way they win is not just by applying the wrong standards. They win by applying double standards.
Just look at how many elites talk about the judiciary today—and compare it to how they talked
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