D.C. Circuit

Morning Docket: 01.25.08

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Monica Lewinsky's ex boyfriend's wife for president.jpg* Does the Bush Administration have Blackwater’s back? The U.S. pushes for specific legal protections from Iraqi law for civilian contractors. [New York Times]
* West Virginia: a little less corrupt than last week? WV Supreme Court agrees to rehear Massey Energy case (previously discussed here). [AP; WSJ Law Blog]
* D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg steps down early, to make way for Chief Judge David Sentelle. [D.C. Circuit (PDF) via How Appealing]
* NYT endorses Hillary Clinton (but not for the reasons identified in the bumper sticker at right). [New York Times; New York Times]
* A more detailed report on the Georgetown Law event with Justice Ginsburg that we wrote about last night. [Georgetown Hoya via How Appealing]

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 9.16.07 and 9.23.07

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LEWW logo.jpgSo LEWW was at a wedding the other weekend, and who should plunk down next to us but a reporter for the NYT Vows section! It was a deeply emotional, humbling experience — like being face-to-face with Gandhi, or Bono — but after we recovered, we waved our ATL press credentials and had a nice chat with the correspondent.
Turns out it was her first Vows column, so we briefed her on the most basic rules of Vows column writing: Make sure you refer to the bride, groom, or both as “honest,” “courageous,” “spirited,” or “down-to-earth,” etc., and definitely include at least one forced simile (“as white as a sun-bleached seashell” is good; “as grounded and unshakable as a redwood” is a two-fer!).
We can’t wait to read about that wedding in this coming weekend’s NYT, but in the meantime, we have two weeks worth of LEWW to catch you up on. Here are our featured couples:

1.) Kate Edmonds and Alex Donner
2.) Denise Delgado and Keith Kerman
3.) Fell Ogden and Charles Gray Jr.
4.) Daisy Wademan and Luc Dowling
5.) Deecy Gray and Douglas Ginsburg
6.) Aielleen Fajardo and Stefan Schick

More about these couples, after the jump.

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Who Will Be the Next AG? We’re Saying Silberman

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Laurence Silberman Judge Laurence H Silberman Laurence Hirsch Silberman Above the Law blog.jpgAs noted in the Washington Post, President Bush is expected to name Alberto Gonzales’s replacement as attorney general in the next few days, after returning from Australia tomorrow. The WaPo seems to be predicting Ted Olson:

[F]ormer solicitor general Theodore B. Olson has emerged as one of the leading contenders for the job, according to sources inside and outside the government who are familiar with White House deliberations.

Other candidates still in the running include former deputy attorney general George J. Terwilliger III and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Laurence H. Silberman, according to the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the discussions.

Even though we’re still rooting for our former boss, based on this short list, we’re predicting Judge Laurence Silberman (who previously served as Deputy Attorney General, the #2 job at the Justice Department).
More thoughts, including discussion of George Terwilliger and Larry Thompson, after the jump.

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Silbermannerisms: A Pair of Stinging Benchslaps

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Laurence Silberman Judge Laurence H Silberman Laurence Hirsch Silberman Above the Law blog.jpgThe D.C. Circuit’s administrative law-heavy docket can be a total snooze-fest less than thrilling. But at least that uber-prestigious court is stocked with some interesting personalities.
Like the prominent, conservative, and temperamental Judge Laurence H. Silberman. From a tipster:

How about giving a shout-out to the latest Silbermannerisms? Yesterday Judge Silberman served up these two gems in a completely run-of-the-mill case, Menkes v. DHS (PDF):

“In response, the government raises a number of threshold jurisdictional arguments. Frankly, we do not think them worth a tinker’s damn.”

“This argument [is] unworthy of the government.”

OUCH — but not out of character for Judge Silberman. More from our source:

[H]e’s badass. The all-time greatest Silbermannerism:

“If you were ten years younger, I’d punch you out!” [Silberman to Abner Mikva, in conference with Ken Starr, as recalled by Mikva -- New York Times, 9/1/1998]

Someday I’ll start a blog on the DC Circuit, and when I do I plan to make Silbermannerisms a regular feature. But in the meantime, I hope you put those quotes to good use! He’s surely the greatest Judicial Divo of all time.

Judge Silberman is certainly in the running for that title. But what about his liberal counterpart, Judge Harry T. Edwards? No shrinking violet, he.
Menkes v. DHS (PDF) [U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit]

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Randolph Clerks: Too Much Time on Their Hands?

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Prettyman courthouse.jpg[Ed. note: We now turn the floor over to the fabulous Laurie Lin, of Legal Eagle Wedding Watch, for a guest post on the D.C. Circuit clerk book proposal controversy. This post was originally scheduled for publication yesterday afternoon, when Laurie was holding down the fort while we were offline and in transit. Sadly, technical problems -- yeah, we know, we're working on it -- prevented timely publication.]
We know the DC Circuit’s caseload is notoriously light, but we had no idea the clerks were jonesing so hard for something to do! Two current clerks in Judge A. Raymond Randolph’s chambers recently circulated a book proposal on habeas corpus and the war on terror, a topic about which they claimed to have some expertise — as a result of the high-profile cases to which they currently have access in Randolph’s chambers! Read on for more about this ethical morass:

The problems arose when their proposal, which was emailed to constitutional scholars across the country, surfaced on a blog. University of Miami professor Steve Vladeck raised questions about how this affected their work as clerks for a Judge A. Raymond Randolph. Randolph, of course, not only authored the most recent decision about the Guantanamo detainees, Boumediene v. Bush, but was also the scribe for two cases already overturned by the Supreme Court, Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
It was a connection the two clerks flaunted, noting that they brought a “unique perspective” to edit submissions because “they have spent a year in the legal trenches” as clerks on the D.C. Circuit “during a year that saw several landmark detention decisions likely to end up before the Supreme Court.”
But the two men forgot one key thing: to tell (or, rather, to ask permission from) their judge.

Whoops.
More on this controversy, including Judge Randolph’s official reaction to his clerks’ jaw-droppingly poor judgment, after the jump:

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Liberal Law Professors and Guns: An Improbable Romance

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gun pistol firearm Second Amendment Above the Law blog.jpgLiberal law professors can be pretty predictable in their tastes. Volvo stationwagons. Fair trade coffee. Guns.
Guns? Yes, guns. No, not gunners — guns. Firearms. Bang bang. The good ol’ Second Amendment.
According to a very interesting NYT article, by Adam Liptak:

In March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been unimaginable.

There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

In those two decades, breakneck speed by the standards of constitutional law, they have helped to reshape the debate over gun rights in the United States. Their work culminated in the March decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, and it will doubtless play a major role should the case reach the United States Supreme Court.

Legal academic debate with real-world ramifications? Wow. This truly is newsworthy.
Thoughtful blogospheric reactions from Jonathan Adler, Jack Balkin, Randy Barnett, and Michael Dorf, among others. We were most amused by Professor Dorf, who blog-slaps Liptak, before concluding his post in delightfully catty fashion:

Full disclosure: I spoke with Mr. Liptak last week and expressed skepticism (along the lines described above) about his causal claim. I guess I didn’t say anything quote-worthy.

HA. Hell hath no fury like a law professor not name-checked.
(Sorry, Professor Dorf — not everyone is as susceptible to your charms as Justice Kennedy. You may spend your entire life searching for a jurisprudential romance to match what you had with AMK at One First Street, back in the heady days of October Term 1991.)
A Liberal Case for the Individual Right to Own Guns Helps Sway the Federal Judiciary [New York Times]
Scholarship and the Second Amendment in the Courts [Dorf on Law]
How Liberals Saved the Second Amendment [Volokh Conspiracy]
Scholars and the Second Amendment [Volokh Conspiracy]
The Second Amendment is Embarrassing No More [Balkinization]

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Skaddenfreude: Friday Afternoon Open Thread

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Here’s an open thread for some Friday afternoon discussion — of associate pay raise news (of course), the D.C. Circuit gun control ruling, the latest Patriot Act controversy, or whatever else is on your mind right now.
Friday afternoons and evenings, of course, are favored times for breaking news — especially of the bad variety (e.g., resignations, layoffs, partner de-equitizations, etc.). So if any big news breaks this afternoon or evening, this is a fine place to take note of and discuss it. Thanks.

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Dining With a Diva: Lunch with Judge Janice Rogers Brown (Part 2)

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Above the Law 8 Janice Rogers Brown.JPG
“I wouldn’t call Harry Edwards a ‘judicial divo,’ per se. He’s just really irritable, that’s all.”
This is a continuation of our earlier post about a luncheon talk by the fantabulous Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Judge Brown sits on the D.C. Circuit, the most prestigious appellate court in the country after the U.S. Supreme Court (which she may someday join). She spoke recently before the Federalist Society in Washington, a group that she said she “always enjoys spending time with — despite all the trouble it gets [her] into.”
Discussion and pictures, after the jump.

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Dining With the Diva: Lunch with Judge Janice Rogers Brown (Part 1)

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Ed. note: Fans of diversity will be pleased to note that this post has nothing to do with (1) Aaron Charney, (2) Biglaw pay raises, or (3) Shanetta Cutlar.
Above the Law 13 Janice Rogers Brown.JPG
“I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: I am NOT a judicial diva!!!”
(Okay, she didn’t say it quite this emphatically. But Judge Brown did repudiate the “judicial diva” label, when we asked her about it during the Q-and-A session.)
Some time ago — we’re too embarrassed to mention when — we attended a lunch talk here in Washington with Judge Janice Rogers Brown, of the D.C. Circuit. As we’ve previously noted, Judge Brown is a leading judicial diva and possible Supreme Court nominee.
It was a great event, and we took lots of pictures, of the impressively poor quality that you’re used to here at ATL. Our write-up, with pics, after the jump.

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Janice Rogers Brown: Methinks the Diva Doth Protest Too Much

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Janice Rogers Brown Above the Law Wanda Sykes.JPGLast Friday, we attended a fantastic lunch talk by Judge Janice Rogers Brown (near right; her celebrity doppelganger, Wanda Sykes, is on the far right).
In case you’re not familiar with her, Judge Brown is a leading judicial diva. She’s a former justice of the California Supreme Court and a current member of the D.C. Circuit. In light of her inspirational life story — she’s an African-American female, the daughter of sharecroppers — and her seat on our nation’s most prestigious circuit court, Judge Brown is frequently mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee.
We’ll have more to write about the event later — plus some of our fabulously horrendous photographs, an ATL trademark. For now, though, we just want to share you the best quip of the day (or the “money quote,” as those political bloggers like to say):

“I have NEVER thought of myself as a diva.”

What caused her to utter this sentence? During the Q and A, we got up and asked her (among other things): “Judge Brown, you’re a fabulous judicial diva. But you’re stuck on a court that focuses on administrative law. Do you feel that being on the D.C. Circuit cramps your diva style?”
This was just one of several delightful moments from a great event. We’ll provide a more detailed report later.
Calendar of Lawyer Division Events [Federalist Society]
Fili-BUSTED! Magnificent Judicial Divas [UTR]
Earlier: The Courtroom of Style: Judge Janice Rogers Brown

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