Federal Judges Gone Wild

0:11Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. I'm Joe Patrice from Above the law. I am joined by Catherine Rubino and Chris Williams. Knicks in five. There we go. And we will be talking about some of the big stories in legal from the week that was. We begin with a little, this fanfare, I guess, is for your Knicks. And not just for small talk, but yeah. Yeah. Knicks won the NBA championship for the first time in 53 years. That's a real long time pretty awesome actually yeah and that was that was kind of a crazy series to watch uh as it did appear as though the knicks were behind a lot yeah most of the time well you know yeah yeah i said this on the podcast which is this is divine intervention yeah this is pope leo putting in them calls to god himself or herself i i yeah i mean that was hey hey maybe we're getting the wrong literature here.

1:14Maybe this is proof that New York needs more Muslim mayors. That's also true. Happy if that's the answer as well. I will say, though, my sister is a Villanova graduate and you can't tell her shit right now. That's just real talk. I mean, I did see the social media posts that's like, imagine being the literal Pope and the fourth most liked Villanova grad this week. Crazy series. I guess the quasi-legal ramification of it is Greg Abbott was mocking Kathy Hochul about it. That did not go well for him. And then he tried to defend himself by saying that he's dealing with stuff more important than the championship playoffs, which is not what anybody who understands sports would call it.

2:03He should have learned his lesson from Elmo, who made the mistake of being a traitor. yeah listen if elmo can't say i hope both teams have fun that's the biggest you can't be neutral on a moving train sign that i can i can think of they they carry i saw a picture somebody had elmo's probably hopefully not the elmo and just you know something they picked up from builder bear but they had elmo's head with the eyes x'd out on a pike with a traitor on it which is and And again, this isn't a Mamdani thing. That was biblical, because all I saw that was the king of the Jews that they hung above Jesus at the crucifixion.

2:46Because they would have the crime of the person being crucified on a plaque. But anyway, that was biblical. And I did not expect that Jesus-Elmo crossover at the Knicks parade. Well, I will say, not just biblical, that is one reference to it. But as a white man of a certain age, I have to point out that it's more of a Roman Empire thing because I, of course, think about the Roman Empire. That is very fair and true. But also, a mere few hours after the Knicks secured the NBA championship, which obviously I was up fairly late watching all the coverage and doing all the things. But a few hours later, I set my alarm in order to watch Lewis Hamilton win his first race with Ferrari.

3:36Not his first race overall. He's won a whole bunch of those. but his first for Grand Prix as a Ferrari driver yeah Grand Prix yes yeah because he did win a sprint race last year I guess that's fair that is fair he did in China yeah but this he won the Spanish Grand Prix and it was and I listen I set the alarm to wake up to watch that fully expecting either George Russell or Kimi Insanelli to win that race and I still watched it because I'm a big Lewis fan and my perseverance was rewarded. Fewer legal crossovers with that one. What are you talking about? Lewis is dating a wannabe lawyer, Kim Kardashian.

4:17Oh, there you go. There you go. There you go. All right. I'm glad you managed to get that. I was prepared to keep going on the NBA thing and talk about Wemby's, how their two-tiered justice system as far as Wemby's flagrance. Oh, well, that is very true. And listen, what of our - That's what you get for doubting Catherine. One of our stories from this past week was literally about how big law partners are being nice in the wake of the Knicks run, you know, especially in the deal space because, you know, bro's going to bro it out. But like it was I think it was a really interesting sort of take that, you know, there's a real moment of unity in New York right now.

4:58And that also applies to big law. Yeah, the two things are getting law firm partners to develop empathy. LSD and Nick wins. Like literally associates were like, they're not this nice on Christmas. All right, let's move on to big stories of the week. I think one of the biggest ones, not necessarily the single biggest within any given week, but what will, you know, as the year goes on, long tail, as we call it, become one of the biggest stories. Above the Law released its law school ranking, annual law school rankings. This is our 14th edition of that. For those who've never gone through this before, we created these rankings now, I guess, 14 years ago, with the purpose of creating a ranking that over put the thumb on the scale a little bit for return on investment.

6:00It's more focused on outcomes. It's more focused on whether or not you can get a job on the back end. Will that job help you pay off the amount that it costs? If it costs too much, that's a ding against a school. Not that expensive schools can't be good, but we're weighing all of those things. As with everything, don't use this ranking as your sole determinant for where you want to go to law school, but this is a good counterbalance to what the U.S. news rankings, for instance, to pick one out of a hat, are trying to show. Do you think it's fair to say we're the most transparent ranking system?

6:38We are fairly transparent to the extent that somebody already uh what law school already caught a mistake that was buried in our uh in our system so yeah so we were transparent enough that people were able to find that which we're so transparent you can check our work that's a selling point joe i know that's what i mean yeah uh you don't have that with the other with the other ranking systems yeah no and that that was in uh in addition to our our like base ranking we do put all of the data that we utilize in a system and allow folks to play with the weights a little bit uh so if you care much more as a perspective people have different you know desires needs you know if you are are fortunate enough to be blessed with money not being an option you can weigh it differently yeah the data is all there you can play around so that is uh that is one of the other advantages uh and i know that other ranking systems have started doing things like that after we did too.

7:39So that, you know, we started a trend there. Always leader. Yeah. But they, one of the interesting things about this year's ATL rankings is that only one of us on this podcast goes to a top 10 ATL law school. Yeah. You're welcome, gentlemen. So yeah, they, they were not, I guess we weren't paying attention to the outcomes enough because I don't think, I guess this is a JD advantage job that we currently have. Our job, yeah. Wait, there's an advantage? Yeah. NYU did move up the rankings. Didn't crack the top 10, mind you, but it did move up. But yeah, something that I think is also a little bit different with the ATL overall rankings is that they're a little bit more volatile than the traditional US News ones.

8:24I mean, listen, the US News ones have had a fair amount of volatility since they've been mixing with their sauce. in the wake of sort of the controversies around them. But there's a lot of movement year to year, which I think is a lot of fun and kind of puts a different spin on things. So, yes, Columbia does come in at seven. But you'll also see that Harvard's not, and Stanford aren't on here either. Stanford, of course, the overall top school in many people's eyes right now. They don't even make this list. Yale does for shocking reasons, I guess. I guess they're counting the vice president as a job.

9:03I think there's a lot of weight put on clerkships too, right? That is true. So that is the one methodological choice that the ATL rankings make that I'm not sure we should give as much credence. But we haven't said that yet the overall winner of this year is, which is University of Chicago moved up two places to take the number one spot this year. Right. There should also be a Republican-only clerk option in the rankings thing, considering that – I think, Joe, didn't you write the story? They were saying that if you're not a Trump supporter, you can't get this gig sort of – That was a Department of Labor job, but it is a fair point and one that I've written a slightly different article about, which is that we don't break these things out.

9:52But I will say I've heard rumblings that employers are starting to have this moment as the Republicans have started appointing judges who fail their ABA qualified list. People who have never been judges before, who've never tried cases before, people who are still associates at firms, getting federal judgeships. When that's happening, if the goal of clerkship is to signify to a future employer that you went through an intensive mentorship program with a leader in the field, did you really do that in that instance? And so that subtle change with how they're recruiting Republican judges, and it's not all.

10:40Obviously, there's still a lot of Republican judges who have impressive resumes and continue to be rated as well qualified. But when you get a situation where there's now a growing population of folks who are not qualified, what do you do with those clerkships? And some employers are starting to pay more attention to who is this clerkship really with? Our system is not that granular. So we can't ding law schools who might be feeding most of their folks to questionable clerkships. Sure. You could probably find out with AI at this point, though. Well, you know, that's a great point. I'll bet AI would do a decent job of breaking all that down.

11:20Although a lot of these things aren't reported in obvious places. That's the, you know, like the trick of it all. Yeah, the Supreme Court ones, we still largely rely on gumshoe work from David Latt to get the list of who everybody is. Well, let's take a break and we'll be back with another story. Speaking of judges in a minute.

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12:21All right, speaking of judges who may or may not have the best, how do we put this, you know, teach the best life lessons out there. Temperament that you might want to see. Temperament, yeah. So this was a story out of the Ninth Circuit out in Idaho. So Judge Brian Nelson told, you know, I think that the tagline for this is meet me in the park after school or meet me in the parking lot after school, I should say. So he parked his car. Let's take a second to talk about his car. So he has one of those giant trucks that take up the whole lane and that you can't see anything because you're in, you know, in a different layer of the atmosphere as the driver.

13:09He parked this in a parking lot, not within the lines, shall we say. That's just disrespectful. Well, I mean, that was the crux of my write up is whatever happens next in this story and what happens next is wild. Whatever happens next, the fact that he can't park actually should be the reason he loses a job. Outside the lines is generous. He parked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Yeah. One of the things just about the parking is, which I don't necessarily think you know if you haven't lived a bunch of places, is that parking spaces are not a uniform size. That is correct. You know, in New York, you're going to have to do a much better job of getting in those lines than Texas.

13:53Honestly, in Texas, it's wild. I think you could put two of my cars in that spot in Texas. Well, and that gets you to this is out in Idaho. So my presumption is that those spaces are large because there are a large number of people who have these kinds of trucks, which is really the reason you need bigger spaces. And he still couldn't get it in between the lines. Now, that said. Because he parked damn near orthogonal. I don't know how to say the word, but I know the word. That's what I'm saying. It's not just like, oh, like I pulled in quick. I thought I hit it, but I have to run. Yeah, I'm on the line, but I'm just I'm just running to get my prescription or something.

14:28You know, you could only this seems like deliberate. Well, no. No, we live in a society. That is not an excuse. I said almost. You could almost forgive someone. No, that nonsense is not an excuse. Now, he actually does in the closed, you know, not closed captioned, in the closed circuit video of this event. It is so the person in it who is presumed to be him is saying that I was only in for a couple of minutes. He's doing this lawless bullshit excuse that Catherine's talking about. Yeah. Wow. We have to live in a nation of laws. Listen, listen, I hear you. If you're only in for a couple minutes, then why, just park across, across two handicapped spots on top of orphans.

15:15That was the B point. There's a very different, I think those things are different. All right. Like there's a difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. That is, we are also a nation of laws and they can still have degrees. Speaking of misdemeanors, he's charged with a couple which is this is the one place where I'll kind of side with him another driver comes in and parks next to him and calls him out for his bad parking job now did this driver have to park next to him no there's tons of room because it's Idaho Falls there's of course a ton of room in this parking lot to be fair when the judge is parked in three different aisles it's hard not to park next to him.

15:59See, no, it's not. And that's the thing. Look at this image. It's like there's acres around to park and he chose to park there. No, because he seems like the exact kind of, not the judge, but the passenger seems like the same kind of asshole as you are. You're like, there's a nation of rules here. You have violated our common understanding and I'm going to call you out on that shit. And I think he needed to be called out. I don't know that you needed to park next to him. Anyway, he calls - Is the urinal rule in effect when it comes to parking. Leave a space if he can. Yeah, he was a leave one.

16:31So he gets out and, well, he's calling him out for his bad parking. This is where the person who is presumed to be the judge in this video appears to sort of lose it, goes with the excuse that they were only in for a couple minutes, then swats either glasses or sunglasses off of the face of the other person. then in a extra goofy series of images the other person's like what the hell like tries to pick up his glasses they get thrown the guy goes to pick up his glasses on the other side of the parking lot the person presumed to be the judge chases after him to get to the glasses first and stomp on him it is it's not you know it's not exactly Jets versus Sharks as I say but it is a goofy little battle.

17:23Please tell me he was in robes. He was not. Was he in robes on his car? Oh, that would be amazing. I was like, well, this has to be the onion. You know, I saw the other day, I saw some video of like, oh, this judge was stopped and harassed by somebody, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like a full-on AI video of a judge in robes at a gas station getting in an argument with somebody. And it's like, it's obviously an AI video because judges don't really enjoy wearing those robes at work, let alone are they going out to the gas station with it. You can go just take that off. It'll be fine.

18:00The real key here is what's the over-under on a professor at the University of Idaho College of Law deciding to use a similar scenario as an issue spotter? Because there's a couple of things there that you might want to be pointing out. Yeah, I think there's some issue spotting here. Yeah, it's just not the best. There's some conversation about whether or not it was an emotional time for him, blah, blah, blah, which, sure. Listen, everyone has private lives you know nothing about. But this goes back to why, one, I find the parking to be way more offensive. A bunch is a punch, but this parking job.

18:42I know this is one of those things where the medium is the message and you need to hear another message. You're just hearing us, but you need to see this. You need to see this. How ridiculous this is. But I also think, and I think Gabe Roth fixed the court, it makes this a good point. He's arguing the ethics issues generally, but one side issue he brings up, which I think is a major issue, is this is yet again a situation where this happened several months ago. We're only learning about it because the press decided to dig into it. This could have been buried at the Ninth Circuit. This is the same sort of situation with when now retiring, I guess, Roger Benitez of the Ninth Circuit handcuffed that crying girl.

19:29We only know about that because we reported it. And that forced the Ninth Circuit to come clean that there was an ethics complaint. But like we're in a situation where these judicial ethics complaints are confidential and there's some level to which you want, you know, people get accused of things, especially in a high profile job like that. And you don't necessarily need to drag it all out into the public when it's frivolous. But there has to be a balance where transparency isn't completely lost. And it is a problem that we're only learning about this because the Idaho newspaper managed to dig into it.

20:08All right. We should probably stop here and then have another conversation about judicial ethics. All right. So we're back talking more about Judge Ellera. More about inappropriate parking. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're talking about Judge Ellera Ross, who was getting tickets in her chambers. Oh. So she is so right. So we've kind of talked about this before. She was having sex in her chambers with a high ranking police officer, among other things. This obviously has some extortion risk tied to it, but it also has she lied to investigators when confronted with this. Those are not good things. She is still on the bench.

20:54She just recused herself from the major case that she's been working on. But still there, there's an impeachment inquiry underway. way this week uh this last week what happened was that her remember if you recall from earlier one of the punishments arguably i would say the only actual punishment that she had to do since one one punishment was you don't get to be chief judge and it's like oh i don't i don't have to do annoying extra work but the arguably the one real punishment was that she had to write apology letters to her clerks in the report it's it's made clear that she requested to write vague letters so that it wouldn't be clear what was going on uh and she was granted the some latitude to do that by the 11th circuit yeah the new york times got a hold of the letter uh and it is well it was a little vague so she she did what she said she was gonna do she did follow through You have to write.

21:57So it was a three sentence letter. This is her apology letter for banging a cop in the in the chambers. Thank you for your contributions to our court during your clerkship. I convey my deepest apology for not taking steps to ensure that it was a more positive experience. I wish you all the best in your future legal endeavors and in life. That's a dear John letter. It's not great. That's what we're breaking up now. that's not an I'm sorry so there there's also a bit of a conspiracy theory out there uh whether or not the signature on this letter is actually her signature which adds to the comic value of it if she didn't even bother to sign these herself I'm not willing to go all the way there but there are people online who are comparing her signature on other orders to this and so you can make that decision if you want i will say though that the this letter of course uh it comes out uh this prompts chief judge william prior of the you know you know the 11th circuit to write a letter to judge ross asking about like hey is this possibly another ethical violation that you didn't follow through appropriately on uh what we told you to do vis-a-vis apology letters Now, one, I think she did follow through because you gave her a lot of latitude, which you probably shouldn't have.

23:26Two, but to the extent that she did, that this was a problem, she wrote follow up more detailed letters and sent those out last week. And Judge Pryor wrote back saying based on those, he sees no need for good enough, no need for further action. This is best, I think, like a footnote in this whole sordid affair. like it's not great but she said she was gonna do that yeah well and that's kind of my take on it i think that there we are severely underselling the level of punishment that needs to be meted out towards prior as well as anyone else involved in the 11th circuit and the judicial conference who signed off on all of this.

24:11And, you know, and back to, you know, just to show that I did see that Josh Blackman's also saying that this is a problem over the Vala conspiracy. And I have seen some of his fellow conservative folks say, you know, I think he's being too harsh on all these folks. And it kind of underscores the level to which some people approach this as a purely partisan issue, which is problematic for judicial ethics uh yeah they're like oh shouldn't get mad at them and blackman is mad at the conservative judges who seem to have signed off on this democratically appointed judge doing all this and i i agree uh it is rare that i find myself in full agreement with with professor blackman on something but this is it's true like if you think that what judge ross did is worthy of impeachment you are saying that that that you think her behavior and her judgment is so compromised that the public should be protected from it if that's what you think then all the judges who saw that same evidence and signed off deserve it too and not only signed off like said that they weren't even going to tell us who it was yeah it was yeah they tried to keep this anonymous if you recall until uh we crack the code with ai yeah i rarely hear bad apple arguments for judges but that is what's happening yeah it just it requires a kind of intellectual uh gymnastics to say this is so bad that we need to remove this person from office but all the people who tried to conspire to keep this person's identity hidden did nothing wrong and we should all let bygones be bygones because removing them removes people from our side.

26:09Hey, if you're trying to get AJAB entered into part of the common conversation, I'm cool with it. Well, anything else? Alright, well thanks everybody for listening. You should subscribe to the show so you can get new episodes when they come out, leave reviews, all those things to help the algorithm. Find us, I mean, stars and writing things. So I was just going to say, like writing things actually helps more. They weigh that a little bit more. That's what I was trying to say. Next, you should listen to the Jabot, Catherine's other podcast. I'm also a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalists Roundtable.

26:46You've got other shows from the Legal Talk Network that you can check out. You should be reading Above the Law so you read these and other stories before we talk about them. There's all sorts of social media that you're going to be following like at abovelaw.com. I'm at Joe Patrice. She's at Catherine One. Chris is at Rights for Rent. And yeah. Peace. Bye. Peace.