Your Federal Judiciary
- gjarecke
- Feb 11, 2022
- 7 min read
I have yet more evidence that America is doomed, courtesy of a blog called Above the Law. I only learned of it a year or so ago from a friend of Nancy’s and mine, a lawyer in the Bay Area. He prefers to remain anonymous, and I would too if I ate as well as he and his spouse do. She sends me texts of their dinners, replete with gorgeous meats, vegetables, and potatoes. I sob uncontrollably, and that’s only because of the wine pairings.
In any event Above the Law is a left-leaning, snide and very smart take on all things legal, from law schools to huge law firms, money, technology, and just plain silly stuff. They love Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. Their head writer, Joe Patrice, is the slyest and smartest man I know, almost.
First from Above the Law, there’s a story out of the Federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. (Links on these incidents follow my descriptions.) The Fifth Circuit exists because if you lose a case in the federal trial courts of Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana, and god help you if you’re having to litigate down there, you go see these wise and staunch defenders of right and truth.
Joshua Koppel had to present an oral argument before these Republican-appointed judges. He asked if he could argue remotely as he had young kids at home. No. He had to go to New Orleans to argue in person. The courthouse has a mask mandate in effect.
Once he began his argument in full mask at the podium, Judge JERRY SMITH (capitalized so you will never forget this arrogant douche canoe) asked him to take his mask off. Koppel respectfully suggested he’d prefer to leave it on. Smith told him to take it off. There’s audio in the link below; you can hear both of them clearly, so it’s not a matter of judicial efficiency. “Judge” Smith just told him to take his mask off BECAUSE HE COULD. Remember again that the Courthouse has a mask mandate.
Next: Mr. “Justice” Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee (I’m too depressed to recount how he got on the bench, but it had to do with Mitch McConnell, so, you know), gave a speech to the Federalist Society.
If you don’t know who they are, they’re a group of highly conservative lawyers who spent Trump’s administration recommending lawyers for him to appoint to the federal bench. Many of the appointees were comically unqualified, like if Wile E. Coyote were appointed to the Eastern District of North Carolina. Trump rubber-stamped them, not knowing or caring who they were. At least Nixon knew that his Chief Justice was named something like “Renchburg”—a much more entertaining name than Rehnquist, for sure.
Some weeks ago, newest justice, prolific mother, and member of whack-job Roman Catholic cult Amy Coney Barrett gave a speech at a Mitch McConnell-sponsored event at which she was at pains to assure everyone that Supreme Court justices are not partisan hacks. Who just over-turned a lower court’s decision in Alabama that the GOP’s redistricting there was racist. Who won’t touch Texas’ obviously unconstitutional SB 8 allowing noble citizens to sue anyone who even thinks about having an abortion or helping someone have one. No no, not partisan hacks here.
Barrett’s remarks were reported to groans of irony and disdain. No Republican said a thing.
So how does Gorsuch handle this? Closed room. No press.
As you’ll see, Above the Law posits that Gorsuch could very well have made anodyne comments on some case of nonpartisan interest or told touching and hilarious stories from his law school days, like when he threw some dirty socks on his roommate’s dinner. I admit that I have no idea what a person like Gorsuch thinks is funny, and I’m proud of that.
What we can confidently assert is that he didn’t wear a mask. Though the Chief Justice may have asked all of the justices to wear masks because Justice Sotomayor has diabetes and thus is at severe risk if she catches Covid, Gorsuch, who sits next to Sotomayor on the bench, refused. (Later Chief Justice Roberts denied that he requested anything, but NPR stands by its reporting.)
So Sotomayor—not Gorsuch—has been attending arguments remotely. The least that asshole could do is stay home. Whispers reach us that the rest of the justices think he’s stupid, as in conference he asks questions like, “This is pretty simple, isn’t it?” Of course it is, Neil, that’s why it got to the Supreme Court! Idiot.
I think we know all we need to about Gorsuch: he’s a selfish, mean-spirited, callous sonuvabitch. I personally would like to beat him with an ax. The sharp end.
You know he didn’t wear a mask at that speech, and neither did anyone else.
Next!! (Nancy and I took a course in review for the bar exam, and the guy who taught criminal law was a hoot—instructors in that had to be, it was all so tedious. He taught at Southern Cal and had a luxuriously long mustache. He’d cover some topic and then yell, NEXXXTTT! No doubt to wake us all up.)
Jane Mayer reported this head-slapping yet seriously dangerous situation in The New Yorker. Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is the wife of Mr. “Justice” Clarence Thomas. She is a right-wing nutbar, as is he. A writer lived across the street from Ginni’s family in Omaha, which I’m told is in the state of Nebraska. (I have no first hand knowledge of this alleged fact, nor do I ever intend to gain it, so I warn you that this is hearsay.) He said that Ginni’s family, the Lambs, were prominent in the community, and they were as far out to the right as you could get. So the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.
I’ll spare you the depressing details, but Ginni Thomas leads some right-wing organization in DC. She often gives awards to other right-wing nutbars who lead other right-wing organizations. Often those organizations have cases before Mr. Justice Thomas.
Let us step back a second. Despite people thinking that lawyers are mainly crooks, we have a very stringent code of ethics that can be so complicated that you can fuck up without realizing it. Or probably I could, though somehow I never ran afoul of the rules. Or at least no one noticed.
But one piece of it is brutally clear: a lawyer must avoid even “the appearance of impropriety.”
When Nancy and I graduated law school, we took jobs in the same city. My firm, a group of extremely upright people, were trained by the firm’s gentle patriarch, William Adams. One day, he was home sick, and he wanted a file brought to him. He called and instructed one of the lawyers to find the file in his office, which was in the center of his desk. The lawyer was to lift it and put it into a briefcase or other method of conveyance without looking at it and bring it to his house.
The lawyers in my firm, tickled by Mr. Adams’ extreme and unnecessary sense of propriety (one partner’s knowledge is imputed to the rest in the firm), somehow had a set a handcuffs in the office. I don’t want to know why. You know what’s coming. One of them put the file into a briefcase, handcuffed it to his wrist, and two others accompanied him to Mr. Adams’ home.
Lawyers actually used to think that way, if only in jest, and I hope some still do.
After I received my offer of employment, I called the firm and told them that Nancy and I had subsequently become engaged—I was worried that they might rescind the offer. No, not at all, but they wrote a letter that Nancy’s firm had to sign stating that neither of us would work on any matter that involved the other.
A year or two later, an enormous case, a hostile takeover, came into both of our offices. I don’t recall how Nancy’s firm handled it, but if I so much as walked through the library when a couple of lawyers were discussing an issue in the case, they immediately shut up. Sounds strict, but that’s the way it ought to be.
Justice Thomas sitting on the bench to rule on some matter before him that involves organizations that are involved with his wife is more than an appearance of impropriety. It’s just fucking improper. But he refuses to recuse himself in matters on which he and his wife probably talk openly at home.
Legal ethics experts across the country are slapping their heads in amazement. Yet the Supreme Court is not bound by the same rules as other federal courts as to this ethical issue. The Chief Justice made a recent statement to the effect that the Supreme Court will police itself and get your nose out of our business, you peons. I wouldn’t have figured CJ Roberts to be that arrogant, but that’s where we are.
When the Court overturns Roe v. Wade, guts the Voting Rights Act further, and finds in favor of that redneck football coach in Bremerton who wanted to hold prayers on the 50 yard line after games—and that is coming, you know it is—I hope and expect that unruly mobs will charge the Supreme Court building and burn it down. This time, unlike January 6, I hope we get it right.
I urge Jane Mayer’s article in The New Yorker on you, as you may not yet be depressed enough at the death of our democracy.
A footnote: after you’ve read this, you know I have an itchy trigger finger on the laptop, if you didn’t already. Biden announced that he would fulfill a campaign promise and appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court to fill Justice Breyer’s seat. A redneck peckerwood sonuvabitch from Mississippi, Roger Wicker, said that would be a case of affirmative action. I emailed him to say that he only held his Senate seat because of white privilege and oppressing black voters for centuries and he could screw right off and anyway this was the first I’d ever heard of him. I haven’t heard back. I never do. I write McConnell regularly to tell him that when he dies and he thinks it’s a sunny day and it’s raining on his grave, that’ll be me peeing on him.
You have to take some enjoyment in life.
This is where our Nation's justice is protected and ensured. Right.
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