Law Students Support Slaughter of Israelis - Deny Them Admission to Bar?

WASHINGTON - Oct. 12, 2023 - PRLog -- One law firm has already rescinded an offer of employment to a law student who wrote that Hamas's slaughter of innocent Israeli children was "necessary," and others are likely to follow.

At Georgetown University, Law Students for Justice in Palestine also reaffirmed their "support and full solidarity."

Harvard's Law School Justice for Palestine, Harvard Jews for Liberation and Harvard South Asian Law Students Association reportedly all signed onto a similar letter.

This raises obvious and important questions, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who was widely quoted when he threatened to oppose the admission to the bar of law students at Stanford who had violated free speech rights, and the rules of the law school, by shouting down a visiting judge who had been invited to speak. See:
This Law Professor Took on Nixon and Trump * * *  Now He's Facing Off Against Stanford Law School Students

Do students who publicly support the murder of innocent Jewsn in support of a cause possess the necessary character and fitness to be admitted to practice law and represent clients or is their support for murderous lawlessness likely to infect the way they practice law?

Similarly, should the committees which investigate applicants for admission to the bar admit law students who support such mass murderers?  Indeed, should the committees require students who apply for admission to disclose whether they publicly supported the murders?

There is, of course, a distinction between action and speech - just as there is a distinction between taking away an existing license to practice law and denying a license to someone who is simply seeking to acquire one - so that preventing law students from Stanford who took action to drown out a speaker from becoming lawyers might be different from keeping applicants out of the bar based upon what they proclaimed in public, notes the law professor.

In a related matter, should law schools, especially those which so strongly condemned such statements of support, report the names of the students who signed them to the bar admission authorities as having a possible bearing - an issue to then be decided independently by bar authorities - on their character and fitness to practice law?

After all, it's all too easy in the current climate for law school deans to piously condemn the mass slaughter of innocent civilians, but quite another to actually try to do anything about protecting the public from those who try - through their public statements - to convince others to support such atrocities.

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