The fallout after the disgraceful display that Stanford Law put on in reaction to Judge Kyle Duncan’s attempt to give a speech has been pretty limited up to this point.

As readers of this blog will recall, the only person who has faced any direct consequences as a result of their actions that day has been the DEI dean, Tirien Steinbach, who was put “on leave” – whatever that means. Does anyone think she will actually be fired, or is this simply an enforced “time-out” so everyone has a chance to cool off? The dean of the law school, Jenny Martinez, did put out a ten page letter to the students that was direct and clear about her perspective on free speech, and that all law students will be required to attend a half-day seminar on “freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.”

But the students themselves who heckled and protested and shouted down Judge Duncan were not subject to discipline by Stanford itself, as Dean Martinez decided that Dean Steinbach was more at fault for not correcting the students in the moment.

That’s not good enough, says John Banzhaf. Who is this guy?

Now an emeritus professor at George Washington University Law School, Banzhaf, 82, is among the most accomplished and aggressive public interest lawyers in the United States. His first legal jihad, waged in the 1960s against Big Tobacco, resulted in strict advertising restrictions on cigarettes as well as a ban on smoking in airplanes. Since then, Banzhaf has led litigious crusades against fast food chains, religious universities, and private clubs, using legal action—or the mere threat of it—to effect social change.”

He’s hardly a right-wing zealot. It was Banzhaf who proposed and popularized the idea of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate former president Richard Nixon, setting in motion the legal drama that would ultimately end his presidency. A half century later, he filed a complaint with Georgia election officials over former president Donald Trump’s 2021 call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger—in which the former president pressured Raffensperger to overturn the state’s election results—leading to a multi-year investigation and several subpoenas.”

So, what can Banzhaf, who has styled himself a “legal terrorist” in the past, do to the Stanford Law students? After all, aren’t those students ideologically aligned with him?

Banzhaf told Stanford earlier this month that he will file a character and fitness complaint against the students with the California state bar.”

“It appears that you have not taken any steps to discipline or otherwise sanction the student violators,” Banzhaf said in a letter to Jenny Martinez, the law school’s dean, who has since ruled out punishing the hecklers. As such, the complaint “will have links to video recordings of the disruption so that bar officials can judge the students’ conduct for themselves.”

The California bar requires applicants to demonstrate “respect for the rights of others and for the judicial process.” That means the students who disrupted Duncan—in part by telling him “we hope your daughters get raped”—could be in for a rude awakening if Banzhaf makes good on his threat.”

This incident “seriously calls into question whether these students have proper temperament to practice law,” Banzhaf told the Washington Free Beacon. “It is completely unacceptable to shout down any speaker—much less a federal judge—and then face no consequences.”

Oh. It sounds like Banzhaf – who is 82, after all – is an old-school liberal in the mold of how the ACLU used to be. But will the California bar actually take a complaint seriously? Banzhaf says yes, and he has no tolerance for the speshul snowflakes who want to be lawyers.

The stakes are personal for Banzhaf, who says that the attitude evinced by the Stanford students—”you can’t reason with people who disagree with you”—is antithetical to the legal system that’s enabled his victories. To fight the tobacco lobby in the court, he told the Free Beacon, “I had to understand its point of view.”

He also had to engage with lawyers who, from his perspective, “were paid lots of money to lie and literally kill people.” It’s a skill Banzhaf says is in short supply among today’s law students, in part, he argues, because they lack a sense of proportionality.”

“Today, you have kids all upset about pronouns or the suggestion that there shouldn’t be treatment for an 8 year old who thinks she’s transgender,” he said. Smoking, on the other hand, kills nearly 500,000 people each year, but Banzhaf would still split a cab with tobacco lobbyists on his way home from court.”

“We didn’t beat each other up,” he recalls.”

In addition, Banzhaf said, filing legal complaints of any kind is a sure way to generate publicity, something most universities like to avoid. And complaints can create cover to act in the face of political headwinds—an excuse for bureaucrats, be they Georgia election officials or California bar examiners, to launch a potentially unpopular probe.”

“Once you file a document, law and custom requires some kind of response,” Banzhaf said. “Bar officials don’t always investigate complaints, but they at least have to look and go through the motions.”

Though the California state bar is among the most progressive in the nation, its committee of bar examiners, who handle character and fitness issues, is older and relatively more conservative, Banzhaf said. It also includes at least one judge, with most members appointed by the California Supreme Court—factors that could make it less well-disposed to Duncan’s hecklers.”

“Judges in particular should be outraged that a fellow judge received this kind of treatment,” Banzhaf said. “My guess is that the California bar will take this seriously.”

Perhaps this is yet more evidence that the cartoon so famously tweeted by Elon Musk back in 2022 is breathtakingly accurate.

pic.twitter.com/Q9OjlJhi7f

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022

And this seems to be happening primarily among “older” self-identified liberals. It’s not happening among the college students. It’s happening among well-known establishment liberals like Bill Maher or Matt Taibbi, who express a formerly acceptable liberal opinion, and find that the hard left is throwing stones at them for not being “woke” enough. The students at Stanford Law would probably end up heckling someone like John Banzhaf for NOT agreeing with them. Banzhaf might be able to rain down some actual consequences on the Stanford Law students now, but what happens ten years from now? Does anyone seriously think that Stanford Law will become LESS leftist in the future? What happens when the Banzhafs of the world are no longer around to file a complaint with the California state bar? When the guardrails are gone, and all former norms have been abandoned, what will we be left with?

While I can applaud John Banzhaf for his attempt to enforce some kind of professional consequences for the Stanford Law students who wish to practice law someday, I am concerned that his actions won’t have the effect that he wants in the long term. Some students have been allowed to run amok for so long, and the administrators have let them, that there is no putting that genie back into the bottle. After all, the assumption was that “professional norms” would bring college students into line once they entered the workplace and left the college radicalism behind. Instead, as we see in media, in education, and in law, they simply brought the radical left theories with them. In regard to the Stanford Law students, their belief in the righteousness in their own behaviors started much earlier than the moment that they began heckling and threatening Judge Duncan. This was allowed when they were undergrads. It was probably allowed in high school. The root of the real problem – the intolerance of another opinion than their own being heard – is being seen in full bloom at Stanford Law, but like a dandelion weed, it’s never going to be gone until it is dug up and rooted out. Using the California state bar to discipline the law students is like mowing over dandelions that are scattered over your lawn. It might look clean and even on the surface, but the roots run deep, and the problem isn’t gone.

And I’m afraid that the roots run so far down, that as the previous generation retires and or no longer has influence, the institutions that American society has relied upon will be choked out by the weeds.

Featured image: Stanford Law School at Stanford University via Filetime on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)