Trump's potential Supreme Court pick ignores his own judicial hubris

[mahatmakanejeeves]

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Opinion > Opinions - Judiciary

Trump’s potential Supreme Court pick ignores his own judicial hubris

by Steven Lubet, opinion contributor 01/19/26 12:00 PM ET


FILE - James Ho testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on nominations on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 15, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Judge James Ho of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is a leading contender for President Trump’s next appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He recently made an oblique pitch for the job, demonstrating his conservative bona fides in the culture war against reviled “elites,” while setting himself apart from other judges who are complacent or undependable.

Writing in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Ho laced into the judiciary for pervasive arrogance, self-importance, insincerity, intellectual dishonesty and self-righteousness. “Too many judges,” he says, “have an overinflated view of their intelligence and their abilities.”

He should have added “hubris,” because Ho’s own article and conduct display some of the very qualities he condemns in others. Then again, too much introspection would just get in the way of openly angling for promotion to the Supreme Court.

Ho vehemently complains of judges who won’t “stay in their lane,” entering judgments that touch on politics and national security, implicitly contrary to Trump’s agenda. They have apparently “forgotten the virtue and value of humility.” ... But it was not long ago that Ho departed from the judicial lane, seeking national attention for his hiring boycott of clerks from Yale Law School, in protest of the law school’s mistreatment of conservative speakers.

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Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus as the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is a coauthor of “Judicial Conduct and Ethics” (5th edition).

[dalton99a]

1. That ho is a pig.