Jeffrey Toobin

Ten Years After Bush v. Gore, the Stench Lingers

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When asked about the decision in Bush v. Gore, Justice Antonin Scalia — one of the best legal minds in modern American history — tells questioners to “get over it.” That’s right, the Supreme Court decided the winner of a popular presidential election, and one of the architects of that decision wants people to not care about it anymore. Is he serious? I wish Scalia could just “get over” the fact that privacy is a right now, but nobody begrudges him the right to ask questions about it.

It’s the ten-year anniversary of the Bush v. Gore decision, and everybody is talking about it, in part because the Court does not talk about it. Writing in the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin tells us that in the decade since the five “conservative” justices stopped Florida’s recount, the Supreme Court has cited Bush v. Gore exactly zero times. Think about that: it’s been ten years since the Supreme Court picked the president, and the Court is kind of hoping everybody forgets about it. Bush v. Gore is like a stripper the Court killed in Vegas when it was there for a bachelor’s party. “She’s got no friends or family, strippers die all the time in Vegas, let’s get back to the hotel and NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN.”

But this isn’t some drunk broad you can drive into the Atlantic Ocean and hope everybody covers for you. This is a presidential election! And whether or not they talk about it, the effect of Bush v. Gore is very evident today — and not just because of the five SCOTUS votes that were more important than everybody else’s….

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The Jeffrey Toobin / Casey Greenfield Drama Rolls On

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Over on the website of the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin has a nice post on how Elena Kagan deftly finessed the “gays in the military” / Solomon Amendment issue while serving as dean of Harvard Law School. It’s an interesting read; check it out here (via Dahlia Lithwick’s Twitter feed).

Alas, these days Toobin is apparently busy with pursuits other than journalism. Over the weekend, the New York Daily News provided a rather salacious update on his alleged affair and resulting love child with Casey Greenfield — the Gibson Dunn litigator, daughter of well-known political pundit Jeff Greenfield, and a media figure in her own right….

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Alleged Jeffrey Toobin Baby Mama Has a ‘Back-Up Plan’

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Over the weekend, Casey Greenfield — Yale Law School graduate, Gibson Dunn litigatrix, and daughter of political pundit Jeff Greenfield — made a foray into film criticism. Greenfield published a review of the new Jennifer Lopez movie, The Back-Up Plan, in the Daily Beast.

Adrian Chen of Gawker breaks it down:

The mother of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin’s purported love child has written an essay about being a single mom….

It has long been thought that married Jeffrey Toobin—CNN analyst and New Yorker contributor—impregnated Casey Greenfield…. Neither Toobin nor Greenfield has ever confirmed this, which probably means it’s true. This weekend, The Daily Beast published an essay Greenfield about raising the-baby-which-probably-belongs-to-Jeffrey-Toobin. (His name is Rory.)

If litigating for Gibson Dunn (and against Jeffrey Toobin) doesn’t work out for Casey Greenfield, perhaps her “back-up plan” is a journalism career. As noted in her firm bio, “[p]rior to obtaining her law degree, Ms. Greenfield worked for magazines and newspapers in New York and Los Angeles.”

(Maybe she could even land a book deal for a memoir about her affair and subsequent experience as a single mom? That’s one book we’d definitely buy.)

So, what’s her Daily Beast essay like?

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So Who Was the Mystery Woman Hit Upon by Jeffrey Toobin?

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Jeffrey Toobin Jeff Toobin CNN New Yorker.jpgWe recently wondered: Is Jeffrey Toobin the Tiger Woods of legal journalism? Like Tiger, he’s phenomenally talented and successful, the biggest name in the game. And, if news reports are correct, Toobin — a legal writer for the New Yorker, a political analyst for CNN, and the author of several bestselling books — may share Tiger’s weakness for women and wandering eye.

The big Jeff Toobin story is his alleged affair with Casey Greenfield, the daughter of political pundit Jeff Greenfield and an associate at Gibson Dunn. This romance resulted in a child that Toobin is allegedly refusing to support, according to Casey Greenfield — who just took Toobin to court over it.

Last weekend, the New York Daily News wrote about Toobin’s purported advances towards “a well-known media figure.” According to Rush and Molloy, Toobin made a proposition to this woman that was so crude as to be unprintable, even by the Daily News — and that’s saying something. (The folks at Gawker were less inhibited.)

So, who was the mystery media figure Toobin found so alluring?

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Is Jeffrey Toobin the Tiger Woods of Legal Journalism?

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Jeffrey Toobin Jeff Toobin CNN New Yorker.jpgLeading legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin — this year’s commencement speaker at Penn Law and Golden Gate Law, by the way — has been making headlines rather than writing them as of late. Last week we covered his family court showdown with Casey Greenfield, an associate at Gibson Dunn and the daughter of television pundit Jeff Greenfield (Toobin’s former CNN colleague).

Over the weekend, the New York Daily News alleged that Toobin — who has been married to fellow journalist and Harvard alum Amy McIntosh, for almost 25 years — has long had a wandering eye. According to Rush & Molloy:

[Toobin] is said to have made a play for a well-known media figure. The woman, who met Toobin about 15 years ago, contends he hit on her repeatedly, using some shockingly sexual come-on lines.

“I was at a party in Washington,” the woman tells us. “He came up behind me and whispered in my ear …”

This being a family newspaper, we can’t repeat what Toobin allegedly told the woman he’d like to do to her. But the woman recalls, “I didn’t even know who he was. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was so disgusting. At the time, I never even knew people did that.”

So what did Toobin want to do to this “well-known media figure”?

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Legal Eagles Mate: But Who Will Take Care of the Eaglet?
Jeffrey Toobin Taken to Family Court by Gibson Dunn Associate.

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Casey Greenfield Jeffrey Toobin Jeff Toobin.jpgOne blogger teed up a story about celebrated legal and political journalist Jeffrey Toobin being sued for paternity with this quip: “This Might be Scandalous If Anyone Watched CNN.”

But people also read the New Yorker, where Toobin is a longtime legal correspondent, as well as Toobin’s bestselling books — including, most recently, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.

So let’s get inside the not-so-secret world of Jeff Toobin and Casey Greenfield — daughter of television personality Jeff Greenfield and an associate at Gibson Dunn (so there’s a Biglaw connection here too). From the New York Daily News:

One of the media elite’s most whispered-about scandals went public Wednesday when married CNN correspondent Jeffrey Toobin squared off with a woman who says he’s the father of her baby.
Yale-educated lawyer Casey Greenfield — the daughter of eminent CBS News analyst Jeff Greenfield — had a chilly faceoff with Toobin in Manhattan Family Court.

Watch out, Jeff: Casey practices in litigation at Gibson Dunn, recently named by the American Lawyer as Litigation Department of the Year. And if this litigatrix loses, she might take it to a higher court — perhaps aided by GDC’s stellar appellate practice. (Thanks to Ted Olson’s involvement in the Proposition 8 case, Gibson lawyers are acquiring expertise in family and matrimonial law.)

More discussion — plus a better photo of Casey Greenfield, who’s quite attractive — after the jump.

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Jeffrey Toobin Taken to Family Court by Gibson Dunn Associate.“

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Peering Into The Crystal Ball for Obama’s Judicial Picks
(Plus a live chat with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin)

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Barack Obama small President Barack Obama.jpgThe current New Yorker has an interesting piece by Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama’s judicial picks. Toobin took part in a live chat about the piece at NewYorker.com right now earlier today if you’re interested. (Try not to crash their website.).
UPDATE: The chat’s quite interesting. Toobin reveals why he likes Justice Souter best and answers this young wannabe judge’s question:

11:31 Guest: I’m a 25 year old law student, I want to be a judge, and my roommate smokes pot. How worried should I be? Do you think people will still care when I’m older?

11:32 Jeffrey Toobin: Don’t inhale! I’m kidding. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Our president has more or less admitted he was a pretty big pothead in his day, and it’s been a non-issue. Certainly the fact that your roommate smokes — not you — is irrelevant.

Toobin’s piece is available online to non-subscribers here. If you don’t feel like clicking through seven pages, here’s the ATL reader’s digest version:
Jeffrey Toobin small CNN New Yorker legal lawyer Above the Law blog.jpg

  • Aging liberal judges hung on through the Bush era, but once a Dem took over, they were ready to hang up their robes. Additionally, since 2006, Senator Patrick Leahy has prevented Bush’s nominees from getting through the Judiciary Committee. Now vacancies abound in the federal judiciary.
  • Bush kicked ass in choosing judges; Obama is taking his sweet time. In the first eight months of their respective terms, Bush nominated 52 judges while Obama has chosen 17.
  • Obama says he’s looking for “experiential diversity” in his judicial nominations: “not just judges and prosecutors but public defenders and lawyers in private practice.” But his first batch of nominees are mainly former judges, like SCOTUS justice Sonia Sotomayor and Indianapolis federal district judge David Hamilton, nominated by Obama to the Seventh Circuit.
    More bullets, after the jump.

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    (Plus a live chat with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin)”

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    Morning Docket 05.20.09

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    lipstick.jpg* Struggling to compete for business in a shrinking market, law firms are hiring image and marketing consultants to improve their chances–one Philadelphia-based image consultant even tells them how to dress for the courtroom. Lay-off problem solved–apparently all you need is a makeover. [The Wall Street Journal]
    * Not only that, but in an effort to be more business savvy, more firms are investing in management courses for their top lawyers. [The Wall Street Journal]
    * Tweets lawyers should follow. [Law.com]
    * Jeffrey Toobin on John Roberts. [The New Yorker]
    UPDATE: * Kash on Toobin on Roberts. [Above The Law]
    * The District US Court of Appeals ruled that the White House can keep emails from the public because the White House Office of Administration is not subject to The Freedom of Information Act. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

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    Chief Justice John Roberts: The Elephant in the SCOTUS Courtroom?

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    john roberts.jpgEveryone’s a-twitter about Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Chief Justice John Roberts in this week’s New Yorker. And with good reason. We’re not sure whether the title of the profile, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” is meant to describe Roberts or Toobin.
    We’re sure you’re familiar with Toobin, the ubiquitous legal analyst whose resume includes gigs with CNN and ABC, as well a Harvard Law School degree, a stint as an assistant U.S. attorney, time on the Oliver North trial, a Second Circuit clerkship, and many books, including The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. And he’s not yet 50 years old (though he’ll be 49 on Thursday, according to Wikipedia).
    But back to Roberts. He gets a fairly harsh appraisal in the profile, coming across as a political stooge:

    After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

    Toobin does not appear to be a fan of the Roberts Court. More on the elephant in the courtroom, after the jump.

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    Spam Email of the Day

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    Jeffrey Toobin small CNN New Yorker legal lawyer Above the Law blog.jpgIf you’re a judiciary junkie who used to read Underneath Their Robes, the judicial news and gossip site that was our first foray into blogging, you may be mildly amused by this strange piece of spam.
    Jeffrey Toobin — legal affairs writer for the New Yorker and author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, one of our favorite books in 2007 — forwarded the rather bizarre email to us yesterday. Check it out, after the jump.

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