His defenses of forum shopping on the actual merits are also unpersuasive. Most of his speech focused on forum shopping in bankruptcy and patent cases, which is a legitimate problem. Ho claimed, however, that the Fifth Circuit’s critics are disingenuous because they don’t want to reform these problems as well. Jay Willis, a legal columnist at Balls and Strikes, described this as “an archetypical example of whataboutism” and noted that Ho “offers no evidence for the proposition that opponents of forum shopping are also outspoken defenders of forum selling.”
Beyond that, Ho focused more on ideological grievances than substantive defenses. He even took a swipe at Chief Justice John Roberts for failing to rush to their aid. In 2018, Roberts famously rebuked former President Donald Trump’s criticism of specific federal judges by declaring that there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges,” describing them as “an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
“You can’t proclaim that ‘we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges’—but only speak up when it’s an Obama judge who is criticized,” Ho argued. “If you do that, then you’re announcing that we do have Obama judges and Trump judges—because you’re only willing to defend one, and not the other.” If Ho is suggesting that he will be a “Trump judge” because people criticize him and the chief justice doesn’t specifically defend him, then my guess is that he was a “Trump judge” all along.