Courts

Judges Should Get Comfortable 'Harsh Criticism,' Says Federal Judge Who Throws Epic Hissy Fits Over Student Criticism

Judge Ho talks tough after spending a year whining about critics.

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Judge James Ho Jim Ho

(via YouTube)

Last week, Judge James Ho told the Heritage Foundation that judges need to “get comfortable” with “harsh criticism” of originalist opinions. Ho’s remarks take not-so-subtle aim at the United States Supreme Court, where speculation mounts that the conservative majority may splinter over gun rights when the Fifth Circuit’s Rahimi opinion forces a showdown between the maximalist and ahistorical “originalist” opinion in Bruen and the conservative tough-on-crime impulse since the defendant in that case is basically living his out his own personal version of The Purge.

From Bloomberg Law News:

“If you’re an originalist only when elites won’t be upset with you, if you’re an originalist only when it’s easy, that’s not principled judging,” Ho said.

This bravado departs wildly from Judge Ho’s last year of pitching a public fit over the prospect of law students picketing outside while a representative from a recognized hate group speaks on campus. Apparently heroically enduring “harsh criticism” from the “elites” is only necessary when you don’t have to actually hear it in the distance. In that case, judges need to throw together half-baked boycotts and demand top-down speech codes from schools to squelch any peep of criticism.

Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, during a question and answer period, asked Ho about the pressure judges feel. Ginsburg said that he doesn’t have social media or read local newspapers, and that he doesn’t feel the same pressure that Ho described.

From the Judge Ginsburg-to-English dictionary: “Oh really? Because I don’t notice any of this supposed ‘pressure’ because I don’t live on social media in a desperate, thirsty bid to be Donald Trump’s favorite federal judge.”

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For a guy who had his Supreme Court nomination derailed over the dumbest media criticism ever, Judge Ginsburg has a much healthier relationship with criticism than his colleague. Though perhaps a sense of permanent victimhood is a feature and not a bug for those with aspirations to the high court these days.

Within the safe confines of the Heritage Foundation, Ho found an audience willing to indulge his posturing as a thick-skinned iconoclast willing to suffer slings and arrows of his critics.

While the rest of us have to suffer guns.

Ho returned to the theme of “fair weather originalism” two weeks before the Supreme Court will consider a ruling he joined that declared unconstitutional a law prohibiting people from possessing guns if they are subject to a domestic-violence restraining order. That Fifth Circuit decision, written by Ho’s colleague Judge Cory Wilson, followed the Supreme Court’s decision last year that created a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public.

Ho said that “when originalism leads to results despised by the cultural elites who lead the national discourse,” judges “face a concerted campaign of condemnation.”

And when originalism leads to results Ho doesn’t like, he just makes stuff up about the caselaw. At least that’s the story of his Rahimi concurrence, where he cited cases seemingly without even bothering to read them, cherry-picking Second Amendment language from decisions that hinged on the principle that of course the Second Amendment is not an unqualified right. Now he hopes to shame the Supreme Court into rubber-stamping this botch job by calling them spineless cucks if they don’t.

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Because when he says judges should get comfortable with harsh criticism he means they should cower in fear of harsh criticism from him.

Fifth Circuit’s Ho Calls on Judges to Embrace ‘Harsh Criticism’ [Bloomberg Law News]

Earlier: Judge Ho Apparently Didn’t Bother To Read The Cases He Cited In Domestic Abuser Gun Opinion

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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