Federal Clerk Attacks His Law School For Celebrating Pro Bono Work

Sometimes the University of Chicago gets a bad rap because of its professors, students, overall outlook on life, but deep down the law school generally does right. Last year, the school took a heavy black eye when its Edmund Burke Society littered the school with its racist claptrap about immigrants being “toilet people” and the administration couldn’t Ctrl+F its backbone. One of its professors spent the year blocking anyone who pointed out that his social media resembles a game of Mad Libs played by David Duke while fronting that he’s willing to argue with anyone… so long as they can’t actually engage him on any forum.

But there’s nothing broken about Chicago that can’t be fixed by what’s right about the school. To that end, the school highlights a “Pro Bono Volunteer of the Month.” In December, the school honored Osama Alkhawaja, a student working with others on the upcoming circuit challenge to anti-BDS legislation — laws that seek to ban protests against Israel’s ruling government’s policies toward Palestinians.

Say what you will about the effectiveness or wisdom of boycotting Israeli products as a protest, banning peaceful protests would seem to run afoul of the First Amendment, at least as historically understood before it morphed into “why schools should punish meanies who make fun of Milo.”

Enter Chicago alum Josh Hammer, and his respectable 30K+ following of rabid Trumpanistas and Russian bots. In an effort to “Make Chicago Deplorable Again,” he sicced his followers on this poor law student for using his law school years to do some pro bono work.

Certainly, whenever you can take the word of a country where “forced disappearances” are still a thing, you’ve got to take it. Dubai’s status as the Las Vegas of the Middle East sometimes obscures just how troubling the conditions are in the other emirates. It’s also a weird flex for a conservative to defend a country that unabashedly applies Sharia law while demagoguing against its non-existent “creep” in the United States, but here we are.

Secondly, a good rule of legal writing is to purge most adverbs from the vocabulary. Nothing raises a red flag faster than an adverb all but begging the audience to ask why one doth protest so much. “Facially” anti-Semitic? Perhaps “arguably” anti-Semitic. Probably more accurately “potentially” anti-Semitic. There are going to be people looking to boycott Israel for just being Israel, but most of these protestors are just protesting the government’s policies like proud Israeli citizen Natalie Portman, who is not a BDS supporter in name, but has stopped accepting accolades from the government which is pretty much the whole point of the movement. Deploying “facially” is that bridge too far that succeeds only in proving this guy doesn’t understand what “facially” even means.

Which is unfortunate since this guy just wrapped up clerking for Judge Jim Ho on the Fifth Circuit — the sort of place where a working understanding of “facial” should have been a pre-requisite. Just another successful graduate of the Federalist Society’s “affirmative action for troglodytes” policy that disproportionately rewards the trollingest of right-wing law students with advancement opportunities. But even with a greased career path to Jones Day or U.S. Attorney General or wherever someone with scant experience and a Dittohead bumper sticker goes these days, it’s still an unprofessional look to go around dissing pro bono efforts from a law student but here we are.

But at least this whole affair finally answers conservative law professor Orin Kerr’s question of why Judge Ho’s clerks aren’t urging the judge to not look like a drooling whackjob — his clerks might all be in on the loopy!

Osama Alkhawaja, ’20, on Using His Education for Social Change [University of Chicago Law]

Earlier: You Should Absolutely Read This Insane Law School Event Promo Calling Immigrants Toilet People
UChicago Administration Doubles Down On Mocking Immigrants — So Much For That ‘Environment Of Inclusion’ They Said Was So Important
Crybaby Law Professor Quits Twitter In A Huff Over UChicago Immigration Slur Debacle
Dumb Law School Professor Calls Supreme Court Justice Dumb

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Joe 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.