Shawn Fleetwood writes for the Federalist about one federal judge’s refreshing commentary.
Years before becoming a judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, James Ho clerked for the renowned Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. So, it should come as little surprise that after witnessing Thomas’ mastery of words up close, Ho would go on to display his own writing prowess in his judicial works.
Receiving little attention outside legal circles, Ho authored an article for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy last week criticizing what he views to be an increasing “arrogance” among many federal judges — an arrogance he argues is downstream from judicial supremacy. As The Federalist previously described, judicial supremacy is the belief that the executive and legislative branches are subordinate to the Supreme Court and the judicial branch, meaning judges — rather than the people’s elected representatives — are the ultimate authority on law and policy.
Ho started his article by highlighting how many of the federal judges now supposedly concerned about “judicial independence” after President Trump’s return to office were silent as left-wing “cultural elites bombarded certain Justices and judges with absurd ethical complaints.” Their silence persisted, Ho added, even “[a]s the [Biden] Justice Department refused to prosecute individuals for harassing certain Justices at their own homes” after the leak of SCOTUS’s 2022 Dobbs draft decision, and “[a]s elite law schools allowed students to disrupt events to protest certain judicial decisions.”
“It wasn’t until this year — following the inauguration of a new President — that the Federal Judges Association suddenly found its voice, and suddenly discovered a crisis over judicial independence,” Ho wrote. “After years of silence, it’s obvious that these concerns are not sincere, but strategic. What they’re really championing is not judicial independence, but judicial supremacy. What we’re really seeing in the judiciary is not principle, but arrogance.”
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