Oh, sure, Ho is himself an immigrant from Taiwan. But, he\u2019s talking about the bad<\/em> kind of immigrant, if you know what he means. And I think we all do!<\/p>\n On July 17th, Judge Pick Me delivered a speech on \u201cjudicial courage\u201d at an event hosted by the First Liberty Institute, an astroturf Christian legal group dedicated to knocking down the wall between church and state. <\/p>\n \u201cFaith in Schools? America Says It\u2019s Ready for It!\u201d screams a recent post<\/a>.<\/p>\n South Texas College of Law Professor Josh Blackman, who has a profitable side hustle laundering fringe bigotry and returning it with the gleaming patina of legitimacy, was greatly moved to hear it and persuaded the judge to allow him to publish the entire speech<\/a> at the The Volokh Conspiracy.<\/p>\n Ho held forth on \u201ccertain self-evident truths.\u201d Again, you know the ones<\/em>.<\/p>\n The \u201cBiblical truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.\u201d The \u201cBiblical truth that men are not women.\u201d The \u201cbasic truth that pregnancy is not an \u2018illness\u2019 \u2014 and chemical abortion is not the cure \u2014 no matter what some bureaucrats in the federal government might insist.\u201d<\/p>\n He invoked sainted Justice Clarence Thomas, toiling alone to turn back the clock and overturn Obergefell<\/em>, as Trump\u2019s feckless appointees dither. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re nowhere near the four votes necessary to grant a cert petition \u2014 or the five votes needed to rule on the merits,\u201d he laments, sneering in disgust at the liberal squishes who used the trans petitioner\u2019s appropriate pronouns while stripping her of her civil rights.<\/p>\n But of course, no culture war diatribe would be complete without some gratuitous abuse of immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the basic truth that foreign governments weaponize illegal immigration to hurt other countries?\u201d wondered Judge Ho.<\/p>\n As with so many of the judge\u2019s \u201cbasic truths,\u201d this one is a whole lot more complicated than he lets on. Obviously, states like Russia weaponize immigration by, for instance, sending de facto settlers into occupied Crimea. But Ho doesn\u2019t give a shit about migration patterns in Ukraine or Rwanda \u2014 he\u2019s talking about millions of undocumented immigrants pushed out of their home countries by the same desperation and aspiration that brought every other wave of migrants to America, including him<\/em>. <\/p>\n \u201cJudges are supposed to defer to Presidential declarations of a state of invasion,\u201d he tut-tutted. \u201cSo the Supreme Court should have upheld the President\u2019s birthright citizenship order in full based on his invasion declaration. But the Court didn\u2019t mention the invasion declaration anywhere in its unfortunate decision last month.\u201d<\/p>\n Hmmmm, could that have been because it doesn\u2019t factor at all in the Solicitor General\u2019s petition<\/a> for cert<\/a> in Barbara v. Trump<\/em> and only got a cursory mention<\/a> in one of the related cases? <\/p>\n Awkward!<\/em> <\/p>\n Also awkward: <\/p>\n There\u2019s a saying in my chambers: \u00a0Nobody reads.\u00a0 It\u2019s true in litigation.\u00a0 And it\u2019s true in judicial selection, too.<\/p>\n Nobody actually reads what people have said and written.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why mistakes are made.\u00a0 Because if nobody reads, then it\u2019s not about who would do the job\u00a0best<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s about who wants the job\u00a0most<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n Yes, Jim. Let\u2019s read!<\/p>\n We can start in 2006 when you opined<\/a> that \u201cBirthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That birthright is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n The following year, you wrote<\/a> in the Des Moines Register<\/em> that \u201cChildren born in the United States are legally entitled to U.S. citizenship, regardless of the nationality of their parents,\u201d warning that \u201cDred Scott II<\/em> could be coming soon to a federal court near you.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2011, you wrote<\/a> in the Washington Times<\/em> that protecting birthright citizenship was the only true originalist position and decried conservatives who would \u201csacrifice the moral high ground they seek to claim by invoking the rule of law when they support proposals to repeal birthright citizenship by statute.\u201d<\/p>\n That same year, you denounced<\/a> the \u201cunconstitutional and curious\u201d state efforts to deprive the children of immigrants of all the rights of citizenship in the august pages of the Wall Street Journal<\/em>. <\/p>\n But then, a funny thing happened to the Republican party. Suddenly it wasn\u2019t cool to point out that the Fourteenth Amendment means exactly what it says \u2014 and what the Supreme Court has said<\/em> it says for a hundred years. And so you had to do some fancy footwork.<\/p>\n In 2024, you used a dissent in a case about murder buoys in the Rio Grande to announce<\/a> that, upon further consideration, you realized it was just fine for the president or even the Texas governor to declare an immigration \u201cinvasion\u201d and start treating migrants like an enemy army. <\/p>\n And in case that was too subtle, you sat down with Josh Blackman \u2014 who else! \u2014 to explain<\/a> that birthright citizenship isn\u2019t guaranteed after all:<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to talk about any pending case, of course. But anyone who reads my prior writings on these topics should see a direct connection between birthright citizenship and invasion. Birthright citizenship is supported by various Supreme Court opinions, both unanimous and separate opinions involving Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and others. But birthright citizenship obviously doesn\u2019t apply in case of war or invasion. No one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship. And I can\u2019t imagine what the legal argument for that would be. It\u2019s like the debate over unlawful combatants after 9\/11. Everyone agrees that birthright citizenship doesn\u2019t apply to the children of lawful combatants. And it\u2019s hard to see anyone arguing that unlawful combatants should be treated more favorably than lawful combatants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n Wow! That\u2019s some impressive courage and judicial humility, sir! It really is like you said: \u201cBeing a faithful originalist is like being a faithful Christian. You have to be ready to be hated. To be booed by the crowd. And to ignore the ridicule, and just do the work, as passages like Nehemiah 4 remind us.\u201d<\/p>\n And if that doesn\u2019t get it done, as you said, sometimes \u201cit\u2019s not about who would do the job\u00a0best<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s about who wants the job\u00a0most<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Liz Dye<\/a>\u00a0produces the Law and Chaos\u00a0Substack\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0You can subscribe by clicking the logo:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The post Judge James Ho Shakes His Moneymaker At Christian Legal Cabaret<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Judge James Ho, the thirstiest weirdo on the federal bench, is at it again. Last month, Justice Sam Alito failed to exit stage right \u2014 rude! \u2014 but you never know what might happen, and so Judge Ho is heaving himself toward every open microphone to remind the powers that be that he is a Jesus-loving reactionary reporting for duty. <\/p>\n Should the good Lord and Donald Trump decree that he take his rightful seat at One First Street, he will not flake out like some people<\/em>. He\u2019s not like those other girls. He\u2019s a real originalist \u2026 for Christ! And if he can just break free of the pack of ragey climbers at the Fifth Circuit, he can rid the country of gay marriage and pronouns and immigrants after all.<\/p>\n Oh, sure, Ho is himself an immigrant from Taiwan. But, he\u2019s talking about the bad<\/em> kind of immigrant, if you know what he means. And I think we all do!<\/p>\n On July 17th, Judge Pick Me delivered a speech on \u201cjudicial courage\u201d at an event hosted by the First Liberty Institute, an astroturf Christian legal group dedicated to knocking down the wall between church and state. <\/p>\n \u201cFaith in Schools? America Says It\u2019s Ready for It!\u201d screams a recent post<\/a>.<\/p>\n South Texas College of Law Professor Josh Blackman, who has a profitable side hustle laundering fringe bigotry and returning it with the gleaming patina of legitimacy, was greatly moved to hear it and persuaded the judge to allow him to publish the entire speech<\/a> at the The Volokh Conspiracy.<\/p>\n Ho held forth on \u201ccertain self-evident truths.\u201d Again, you know the ones<\/em>.<\/p>\n The \u201cBiblical truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.\u201d The \u201cBiblical truth that men are not women.\u201d The \u201cbasic truth that pregnancy is not an \u2018illness\u2019 \u2014 and chemical abortion is not the cure \u2014 no matter what some bureaucrats in the federal government might insist.\u201d<\/p>\n He invoked sainted Justice Clarence Thomas, toiling alone to turn back the clock and overturn Obergefell<\/em>, as Trump\u2019s feckless appointees dither. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re nowhere near the four votes necessary to grant a cert petition \u2014 or the five votes needed to rule on the merits,\u201d he laments, sneering in disgust at the liberal squishes who used the trans petitioner\u2019s appropriate pronouns while stripping her of her civil rights.<\/p>\n But of course, no culture war diatribe would be complete without some gratuitous abuse of immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the basic truth that foreign governments weaponize illegal immigration to hurt other countries?\u201d wondered Judge Ho.<\/p>\n As with so many of the judge\u2019s \u201cbasic truths,\u201d this one is a whole lot more complicated than he lets on. Obviously, states like Russia weaponize immigration by, for instance, sending de facto settlers into occupied Crimea. But Ho doesn\u2019t give a shit about migration patterns in Ukraine or Rwanda \u2014 he\u2019s talking about millions of undocumented immigrants pushed out of their home countries by the same desperation and aspiration that brought every other wave of migrants to America, including him<\/em>. <\/p>\n \u201cJudges are supposed to defer to Presidential declarations of a state of invasion,\u201d he tut-tutted. \u201cSo the Supreme Court should have upheld the President\u2019s birthright citizenship order in full based on his invasion declaration. But the Court didn\u2019t mention the invasion declaration anywhere in its unfortunate decision last month.\u201d<\/p>\n Hmmmm, could that have been because it doesn\u2019t factor at all in the Solicitor General\u2019s petition<\/a> for cert<\/a> in Barbara v. Trump<\/em> and only got a cursory mention<\/a> in one of the related cases? <\/p>\n Awkward!<\/em> <\/p>\n Also awkward: <\/p>\n There\u2019s a saying in my chambers: \u00a0Nobody reads.\u00a0 It\u2019s true in litigation.\u00a0 And it\u2019s true in judicial selection, too.<\/p>\n Nobody actually reads what people have said and written.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why mistakes are made.\u00a0 Because if nobody reads, then it\u2019s not about who would do the job\u00a0best<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s about who wants the job\u00a0most<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Yes, Jim. Let\u2019s read!<\/p>\n We can start in 2006 when you opined<\/a> that \u201cBirthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That birthright is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n The following year, you wrote<\/a> in the Des Moines Register<\/em> that \u201cChildren born in the United States are legally entitled to U.S. citizenship, regardless of the nationality of their parents,\u201d warning that \u201cDred Scott II<\/em> could be coming soon to a federal court near you.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2011, you wrote<\/a> in the Washington Times<\/em> that protecting birthright citizenship was the only true originalist position and decried conservatives who would \u201csacrifice the moral high ground they seek to claim by invoking the rule of law when they support proposals to repeal birthright citizenship by statute.\u201d<\/p>\n That same year, you denounced<\/a> the \u201cunconstitutional and curious\u201d state efforts to deprive the children of immigrants of all the rights of citizenship in the august pages of the Wall Street Journal<\/em>. <\/p>\n But then, a funny thing happened to the Republican party. Suddenly it wasn\u2019t cool to point out that the Fourteenth Amendment means exactly what it says \u2014 and what the Supreme Court has said<\/em> it says for a hundred years. And so you had to do some fancy footwork.<\/p>\n In 2024, you used a dissent in a case about murder buoys in the Rio Grande to announce<\/a> that, upon further consideration, you realized it was just fine for the president or even the Texas governor to declare an immigration \u201cinvasion\u201d and start treating migrants like an enemy army. <\/p>\n And in case that was too subtle, you sat down with Josh Blackman \u2014 who else! \u2014 to explain<\/a> that birthright citizenship isn\u2019t guaranteed after all:<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to talk about any pending case, of course. But anyone who reads my prior writings on these topics should see a direct connection between birthright citizenship and invasion. Birthright citizenship is supported by various Supreme Court opinions, both unanimous and separate opinions involving Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and others. But birthright citizenship obviously doesn\u2019t apply in case of war or invasion. No one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship. And I can\u2019t imagine what the legal argument for that would be. It\u2019s like the debate over unlawful combatants after 9\/11. Everyone agrees that birthright citizenship doesn\u2019t apply to the children of lawful combatants. And it\u2019s hard to see anyone arguing that unlawful combatants should be treated more favorably than lawful combatants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Wow! That\u2019s some impressive courage and judicial humility, sir! It really is like you said: \u201cBeing a faithful originalist is like being a faithful Christian. You have to be ready to be hated. To be booed by the crowd. And to ignore the ridicule, and just do the work, as passages like Nehemiah 4 remind us.\u201d<\/p>\n And if that doesn\u2019t get it done, as you said, sometimes \u201cit\u2019s not about who would do the job\u00a0best<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s about who wants the job\u00a0most<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Liz Dye<\/a>\u00a0produces the Law and Chaos\u00a0Substack\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0You can subscribe by clicking the logo:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Judge James Ho, the thirstiest weirdo on the federal bench, is at it again. Last month, Justice Sam Alito failed to exit stage right \u2014 rude! \u2014 but you never know what might happen, and so Judge Ho is heaving himself toward every open microphone to remind the powers that be that he is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":158960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/law-and-chaos-logo-liz-dye-300x153-ZvYJLu.jpg?fit=300%2C153&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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