Old Lady Lawyer: Does Life Imitate Art Or Is It The Reverse?

Christopher Buckley's satirical works, especially Boomsday and Supreme Courtship, are wickedly funny about several of today’s hot-button issues.

old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computer One of the issues that will surely be of interest as the 2016 campaign chooses its nominees from both parties (not to mention the possibility of a third party candidate) is the issue of potential nominations to the United States Supreme Court. Given that Justice Ginsberg is 82, Justices Scalia and Kennedy are almost 80, and Justice Breyer is 77, it’s more likely than not that whoever wins the White House will have the chance to nominate one or more persons to the Court. So, interest in that issue will mount later in the year as the parties’ nominees duke it out until November. Ages of the older justices have already become a topic for discussion, at least in some circles.

Certain nominees have had trouble in confirmation hearings over the last thirty years (for those readers too young to remember, just Google Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg, no relation to the “notorious RBG,” and spelled differently). The New York Post ran a story about how some people in this country think that Judge Judy (Google her unless you have nothing to do during the daytime hours but watch reality television) is already on the Supreme Court. I am not making this up.

Cue the irony: the lack of basic civics courses is a focus of a project of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

That started me thinking (no snide comments here, please) about a hilarious book that I read several years back that deserves a wider audience than it probably got, especially among the bench, bar, and politicians of all stripes. I reread it after reading the New York Post article and it’s even timelier now than when I read it a few years ago.

Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr, (Google him), writes all kinds of books, novels as well as memoirs. His satirical works, especially Boomsday and Supreme Courtship, are wickedly funny about several of today’s hot-button issues.

Briefly, Boomsday (affiliate link) is the story of how we boomers (read dinosaurs) have essentially ruined the world for the younger generations. Since we’re spending your Social Security, the theory is that there ought to be a cutoff for us dinosaurs at which point in time we exit the mortal coil and start taking dirt naps. The young readership would find the book not only entertaining, but a possible road map. Death squads anyone?

The New York Post article about Judge Judy raises the question as to whether life imitates art or the reverse. So does Supreme Courtship (affiliate link), Buckley’s satire about an unlikely nomination made by a president determined to serve only one term (yes, you read that right) due to his dissatisfaction with Washington dysfunction. Nothing new here. The president is especially aggravated after his first two Supreme Court nominees went down in flames before the Senate Judiciary Committee, one because he didn’t have sufficient reverence for Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

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The president, Donald Vanderdamp, a down-home Ohioan who loves to bowl, is pissed off at the nomination process and especially at the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dexter Mitchell, who derailed the previous two picks and who harbors his own desire for a Supreme Court seat. So the President’s third choice (and hopefully the charm) is…wait for it….the female star of a reality television show called Courtroom Six. She’s a good old girl from Plano, Texas, who clerked for a federal judge, sat as a judge in the Los Angeles Superior Court, and then went rogue, so to speak. She is no longer a judge, but she plays one on TV.

Pepper Cartwright, yes, that’s her name, is in many ways a refreshing change from the nominees we see in real life. No one is more surprised than she is when the president proposes her for the vacancy. The real-life nominees have all had conventional legal careers (read appellate experience), but not Pepper.

She doesn’t hesitate to go tête-à-tête with Senator Mitchell in the usual courtesy meeting before her nomination hearing and at her appearance before the full Senate Judiciary Committee. While she is prepared to the nth degree for her appearance, her answers bear little resemblance to the ducking and weaving that real life nominees must do to assert their judicial independence.

No spoiler alert here, but she is confirmed and takes her seat as the most junior justice, e.g. the one closest to the door. Not unlike today’s Court, the Court that Justice Cartwright joins has split 5-4 on many rulings, and in her very first case she hears, she casts the deciding vote.

A parallel story line follows Senate Judiciary Chair Mitchell, who resigns from that post to become President in a TV series called POTUS, produced by Pepper’s husband after his wife has ditched Courtroom Six for the Supreme Court. Mitchell’s political ambition and his TV experience prompt him to announce a bid for the presidency.

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This book is way too much fun to describe any further without falling into the spoiler alert pattern so common today. So, in true cliff-hanging fashion, will Justice Pepper Cartwright remain on the Supreme Court? Will President Vanderdamp change his mind and run for a second term? Will the former Senator Mitchell, now President, at least on TV, win the real presidency? I’d say “tune in,” but I think that’s still associated with the boomer druggie mantra of the sixties (see reference to Boomsday above), which was ” turn on, tune in, drop out,” and no, I didn’t inhale. But I did inhale this book, which is screamingly funny and way too prescient for comfort.


Jill Switzer is closing in on 40 (not a typo) years as a active member of the State Bar of California. Yes, folks, California, that state west of the Sierra Nevada, which everyone likes to diss. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see old lawyers, young lawyers, and those in-between interact — it’s not always pretty. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.