A handful of judges, some of whom are Supreme Court contenders, will tackle antisemitism at an annual convention this week, joining a rare multi-judge panel in a forum typically reserved for one-person lectures, Fox News Digital has learned.
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, who will moderate the discussion among the judicial heavyweights, said the panel is ‘unprecedented’ and a needed change to address what he said was a rise in antisemitism in the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel in 2023. The panel is part of the Federalist Society’s annual National Lawyers Convention.
‘This conversation on faith, understanding, and moral responsibility could not be more timely,’ Altman said. ‘It reflects the importance of the moment, the endurance of Western values, and Judge [Robert] Bork’s abiding belief in moral clarity and in the strength that comes from open dialogue.’
The judges who will participate in the discussion include seven Trump appointees, including Altman, one appointee of former President George Bush, and a justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
They include Judge Amul Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, who was floated in Bloomberg Law as a good successor to Justice Clarence Thomas, in part because he would be the first Asian American justice, a ‘positive’ when weighing replacing the second-ever Black justice.
Two others, Judge David Stras and Raymond Gruender, both of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, were on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist during the president’s first term. Judge Martha Pacold of the Northern District of Illinois appeared on another one of Trump’s shortlists in 2020.
The Federalist Society event has for years been named after the late Bork, who, incidentally, once helped break a law firm’s avoidance of hiring Jewish lawyers, according to Senate testimony by his peers in 1987.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Altman, a vocal Jewish judge who is based in the Southern District of Florida, said he has also arranged numerous trips for federal judges of varying faiths to visit Israel after the Oct. 7 attack.
He said that although his personal conversations about Israel had largely been centered on campuses, ‘it became clear’ to him that the judiciary needed to chime in because heated discourse surrounding the topic involved legal questions.
The deadly attack in Israel reignited conflict in Gaza and led to nationwide anti-Israel protests, especially on U.S. college campuses. Protesters claimed Israel was killing thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza indiscriminately, while the Israeli government said it gave fair warning about its offensive and that its targets were Hamas terrorists.
‘Those claims, is Israel violating the laws of war? Is it an apartheid state? Does it occupy land that doesn’t belong to it?’ Altman said. ‘Those are just legal questions with legal answers, and I thought, who better than federal judges to understand what the applicable legal rule is, to adduce and find out what the relevant facts are, and then to apply the facts to the law and issue a judgment, than a federal judge.’
Some of the judges who will participate on the panel have been on Altman’s Israel trips.
The Federalist Society indicated that the judges plan to speak about their personal experiences talking with people of other faiths about anti-Jewish sentiments. They also plan to address First Amendment concerns surrounding antisemitism.
The discussion comes as the Trump administration has aggressively targeted noncitizens for speech that it has claimed in court is at odds with its national security posture because it is too critical of Israel and potentially supportive of Hamas.
Free speech proponents have warned that offensive and politically charged speech is protected under the Constitution. In the case of Mahmoud Khalil, which has become a flashpoint in these discussions, the courts have been examining the extent to which noncitizens enjoy First Amendment protections.
Altman said he has observed a one-sidedness in the opposite direction on campuses and that pro-Israel expression has been suppressed. Just this year, New York University canceled Jewish legal scholar Ilya Shaprio’s talk there because of what it said were security risks from protesters.
‘I was shocked, honestly, to discover that so many young people in our country, especially on our college campuses, had a totally incorrect view about the one Jewish state in the world and its role in the Middle East and its history and how it came to be, and it also became clear that the sort of debate that was taking place on campus wasn’t really a debate, because only one side of the story was being told,’ Altman said.
