We’d pay a king’s ransom for an update of the music video for “Miami.” Instead of showing Will Smith frolicking with bikini-clad beauties, the new version would feature Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, shaking their bon-bons with surgically-enhanced sirens.
If this sounds unlikely, consider: Winter is still weeks away, but Supreme Court justices are already flocking to Miami.
Late last month, Justice Samuel A. Alito paid a visit, to swear in his former clerk, Alex Acosta, as U.S. Attorney. And just last night, Chief Justice John G. Roberts made an appearance, addressing an audience of 3,000 at the University of Miami. He also participated in an interview with Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News.
Accounts of the Chief’s visit are available from the Miami Herald, ABC News, and our pals at PrawfsBlawg (here and here). We’ve read ‘em all, so you don’t have to — although we do commend them to you, since they’re quite interesting.
Chief Justice Roberts spoke at length about how judges should not rule based on their “personal policy preferences,” and he expressed support for the separation of powers. Quelle surprise.
But he did share some more fun tidbits as well. Highlights from the write-ups, along with our commentary, after the jump.
An interesting update to our prior post about Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent appearance at the Yale Law School. From a current YLS student:
Some of us were bothered — though not exactly surprised — by Dean Harold Koh’s tepid introduction of Justice Scalia. Koh couldn’t seem to find anything warm and welcoming to say about Scalia. Rather, he spent his entire introduction praising Christine Jolls.
It was as though Scalia wasn’t even there. Koh’s lack of hospitality was particularly striking when compared to how he often gushes about other relatively unremarkable visiting speakers.
Like our correspondent, we’re not entirely surprised. We haven’t met Dean Koh in person, and he wasn’t dean when we were at Yale. But we have heard through the YLS alumni grapevine that he is more ideologically motivated, and less evenhanded, than his predecessor as dean, Tony Kronman.
We’ve also heard Dean Koh compared to Dean Elena Kagan of Harvard Law School in this regard. Dean Kagan is politically active on the liberal side. Like Dean Koh, she served in the Clinton Administration (as a domestic policy advisor and in the White House Counsel’s office). She was nominated to the D.C. Circuit by President Clinton, but was denied a vote, and she’s a possible SCOTUS nominee in a Hillary Clinton Democratic administration. But despite her personal leanings, Dean Kagan has been widely praised for supporting intellectual and ideological diversity on the Harvard Law School campus.
(Also, Dean Kagan was a nominee in our Law School Dean Hotties contest. She did not prevail, losing out to a Yalie (Asha Rangappa). But just like the Oscars, it’s an honor just to be nominated.) Earlier:The Eyes of the Law: Did Poor Justice Scalia Have to Spend the Night in New Haven? Law School Dean Hotties: Your Female Nominees “Harvard Law On A Heterodox Spree, Listing to Right” [Volokh Conspiracy]
Last Thursday, Justice Antonin Scalia spoke before the Yale Political Union (an appearance we discussed here). And on Friday morning, Justice Scalia made an appearance at (the) Yale Law School.
Justice Scalia was introduced by his former clerk, the beautiful and brilliant Professor Christine Jolls. This past June, Professor Jolls was lured away from Harvard Law School by Yale, causing the HLS faculty “hotness quotient” to plummet. Professor Jolls, for the record, is less conservative than her former boss; during her clerkship with Justice Scalia, she was the designated “counterclerk” (see comments to this post).
An excellent account of Justice Scalia’s appearance at YLS is provided by Vivek Krishnamurthy. It’s commendably detailed, insightful, and witty. You can check it out here (via How Appealing).
A few excerpts, with our commentary, after the jump.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who loves to take his judicial philosophy on tour, made an appearance yesterday at Yale. He made the usual case in favor of an originalist interpretation of the Consitution, in an address to the Yale Political Union.
An account of his speech appears in the YDN. Here are the two best quips:
“I have no idea what the evolving standards of decency are,” Scalia said. “I am afraid to inquire.”
“[Because of originalism] I cannot do the wicked conservative things I would want to do to this society,” Scalia said.
Nino got some love from the audience:
“He’s a brilliant man and he certainly showed that off tonight,” [student Sam] Purdy said. “I don’t think he was just putting up smoke and mirrors … I left thinking he’s less of a conservative nut.”
So he’s still “a conservative nut” — just not as big. Maybe a pistachio rather than a walnut. The article closes with another backhanded compliment:
Regardless of whether they agreed with his views, many students said Scalia’s witty and at times self-deprecating rhetoric was a departure from the somewhat villainous reputation the justice carries with liberals.
“He was fun, for a conservative,” Chris Wihlidal ’09 said.
Fun — “for a conservative.” ‘Cause you’d rather be in South Beach, knocking back Coronas with Souter and Ruthie. Scalia Urges Literalism [Yale Daily News via How Appealing]
Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are the most famous opera aficionados on the Supreme Court. But it appears that they’re not the only ones. Check out our latest judicial sightation:
It appears that the ranks of the opera-attending justices is swelling. My wife and I spotted the Chief Justice and Mrs. Roberts at the Washington National Opera [on Saturday night], where we, they, and a couple thousand of our mutual friends saw the opening of Madama Butterfly. (The female lead — an understudy! — was superb.)
Because it was opening night, it was “black tie optional.” The Chief showed what he thinks of the “optional” modifier by pulling on the ol’ tuxedo. Good look for him.
Delightful. And we concur with our correspondent: It wouldn’t do for the Chief Justice of the United States to be seen on opening night in anything less than a tux. (And we’re assuming the Chief wore a “real” tuxedo, not what passes for a tux on Oscars night — e.g., a black Prada or Thom Browne suit.)
Two hotties for the price of one: Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, the #1 Superhottie of the Federal Judiciary; and our super-cute correspondent, Justin, a student at the DePaul University College of Law.
West Coast folk, don’t say we neglect you here at Above the Law. Earlier today, we wrote about some Ninth Circuit benchslappery. And now we bring you a delicious judicial sightation, of an Article III celebrity from sun-kissed California: Judge Alex Kozinski, the hottest federal judge in all the land.
Earlier this week, Judge Kozinski visited DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, where he was a guest lecturer in Professor Roberta Kwall’s Copyright/Trademark class. One of the students in that class, Justin (pictured above), provided us with a witty and insightful report about the proceedings.
Justin describes how Judge Kozinski conducted the class (brilliantly), mentions the jurist’s weakness for a certain carbonated beverage, and provides the backstory behind the photograph above. It’s a fun and interesting read, not to be missed.
Check out Justin’s full write-up, after the jump. You won’t be sorry!
If you, like us, find Supreme Court justice sightings more thrilling than Brangelina spottings, you would have died from excitement at the portrait ceremony for Judge Stephen F. Williams.
Judge Williams is the brilliant former law professor who now sits on the venerated D.C. Circuit. Back in the day, before he assumed senior status, Stephen Williams was one of the biggest feeder judges in Christendom. He fed huge numbers of his clerks into Supreme Court clerkships, with an impressively broad spectrum of justices.
The Williams portrait ceremony was held last Friday. Stuart Buck, a former Williams clerk, offers a detailed report. Here is an excerpt:
Portrait ceremonies are evidently a big deal: I’d never been to one before, but it was probably the most legal talent that I’ve ever seen in one room. The entire D.C. Circuit was there, as were six members of the Supreme Court (all except Souter, Kennedy, and Alito).
There was a person I didn’t recognize sitting between Justices Stevens and Thomas. Judge Laurence Silberman later said in conversation that it was Judge Louis Oberdorfer — a long-time and highly respected district court judge who has to be in his late eighties now. [Ed. note: Judge Oberdorfer was also a feeder judge in his time -- especially impressive given that he's "only" a district court judge.]
Well, we’re not sure about that part — nor can we confirm or deny whether the justice was sighted in a “banana hammock.”
But we can report that Justice Alito was recently in MIami, where he swore in Alex Acosta (at right), one of his former clerks, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. From the Miami Herald:
Samuel A. Alito, the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest justice, praised one of his protégés, R. Alexander Acosta, on Wednesday as he swore him in as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
But Alito said that for all his formidable legal talent, Acosta betrayed one ”weakness” when he served as a law clerk in 1994 for the then-federal appellate judge.
”Alex’s knowledge of sports was a little bit lacking,” Alito deadpanned before a standing-room-only gathering of judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers in the historic central courtroom of the Miami federal courthouse.
Alito, a self-professed baseball fan, joked that Acosta probably didn’t know the difference between the Florida Marlins and the Miami Dolphins.
Even if his sports knowledge may be deficient, Acosta is a young superstar of conservative legal circles (as well as “pretty cute,” too). At the tender age of 37, he was nominated by President Bush as Miami’s U.S. Attorney — a position he was already occupying in an acting capacity.
Prior to returning to Miami, where he has deep roots in the city’s Cuban-American community, the brilliant Acosta served as head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. His roughly two-year tenure as Assistant Attorney General was rumored to be somewhat rocky. Acosta’s fairly conservative civil rights agenda apparently did not sit well with some of the more liberal lawyers in the division, who had a different vision of what they’d be doing when they signed up for civil rights work at the Justice Department.
(If you can enlighten us further on these matters, please drop us a line.) Alito protégé sworn in as U.S. attorney in Miami [Miami Herald via How Appealing]
The Ninth Circuit may be getting slapped around by the Supreme Court lately. (Yeah, what else is new.) But they continue to go about their business. Keep on truckin’, Your Honors!
One of you was kind enough to attend a recent Ninth Circuit sitting — not just any old sitting, but the one graced by that judicial celebrity, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — and send us a detailed report.
That account of the oral argument — plus a bonus judicial sight-ation, and some added commentary from us — appears after the jump.
During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Samuel A. Alito, some conservatives grumbled about one nickname bestowed upon him: “Scalito.” They argued that it unfairly treated him as a jurisprudential clone of Justice Antonin Scalia, without recognizing his independence as a thinker. Some also viewed the nickname as reflecting anti-Italian prejudice.
We’d like to reclaim the name of “Scalito,” and put it to legitimate use. Let’s turn it into the judicial equivalent of “Bennifer” (the first and best celebrity couple neologism, superior to “Brangelina” or “Vaughniston”). In these pages, we will use “Scalito” to refer to Justices Scalia and Alito whenever they appear in public together — as they did this past weekend.
Approximately 400 people attended a panel discussion on judicial independence, held this past Saturday at the Washington Hilton. The discussion, sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, featured Justices Scalia and Alito, as well as William S. Sessions, a former FBI director and federal judge, and Lynn A. Battaglia, a Maryland appeals court judge.
Not surprisingly, Justice Scalia stole the show. Accounts of this Article III celebrity sighting focus primarily on his remarks. His main point was to question judicial independence as an absolute virtue: “You talk about independence as though it is unquestionably and unqualifiably a good thing. It may not be. It depends on what your courts are doing.”
Familiar stuff. His remarks about media coverage of the courts were far more amusing:
“The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately. They’re just going to report, who is the plaintiff? Was that a nice little old lady? And who is the defendant? Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy? And who won? Was it the good guy that won or the bad guy? And that’s all you’re going to get in a press report, and you can’t blame them…. Because nobody would read it if you went into the details of the law that the court has to resolve.”
Sad but true. And Justice Alito echoed some of these sentiments:
Alito complained that people understand the courts through a news media that typically oversimplifies and sensationalizes. He said people’s ability to amplify their comments globally about judges and their opinions on the Internet takes a toll on the judiciary.
“This is not just like somebody handing out a leaflet in the past, where a small number of people can see this,” he said. “This is available to the world. … It changes what it means to be a judge. It certainly changes the attractiveness of a judicial career.”
Justice Alito, are you calling into question the value of writing about judges on the internet? If so, you’re hurting our feelings…
(By the way, if you haven’t done so already, please cast your vote in our poll to find out your Favorite Supreme Court Justice. We’ll close the voting once we have about 1,000 votes, which strikes us as a reliable indicator of ATL reader sentiment. Right now we have a little over 600. To vote, click here. Thanks!) Scalia Rips Judges on Abortion, Suicide [Associated Press]
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The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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We’d pay a king’s ransom for an update of the music video for “Miami.” Instead of showing Will Smith frolicking with bikini-clad beauties, the new version would feature Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, shaking their bon-bons with surgically-enhanced sirens.
