Federal Judges Gone Wild | Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer

Chris Williams: Welcome to the curated Legal Talk Network feed. Each week, our team selects three standout episodes from across the network to feature for you smart conversations, timely topics, and voices you need to hear. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe to the show linked in the description. Thanks for listening, and let's dive into this week's picks.

Joe Patrice: Hey, 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: Chris Williams, Nixon 5.

Joe Patrice: 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, uh, this fanfare, I guess, is for your Knicks, and not just for small talk, but.

Chris Williams: Yeah, yeah, Knicks won the, uh, NBA championship for the first time in 53 years. That's a real long time. Pretty awesome, actually.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Oh, that was. That was kind of a crazy series to watch, uh, as it did appear as though the Knicks were behind a lot most of the time.

Chris Williams: And then just. Well, I believe I said this on the podcast, which is, this is divine intervention. This is Pope Leo putting in them calls to God himself or herself.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, I mean, that was.

Catherine Rubino: Hey, hey, maybe we're getting the wrong literature here. Maybe this is proof that New York needs more Muslim mayors.

Joe Patrice: That's also true.

Chris Williams: I'd be happy if that's the answer as well. I will say, though, uh, my sister is a Villanova graduate and you can't tell her shit right now. Yeah, that's just real talk.

Joe Patrice: I mean, I did see the social media post. That's like, imagine being the literal Pope and the fourth most, most liked Villanova grab this week. Crazy series. Uh, I guess the quasi legal ramification of it is Greg Abbott was mocking Kathy Hochul about it. Uh, that. 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.

Catherine Rubino: He should have learned his lesson from, uh, Elmo, who. Who made the. Who made the mistake of being that traitor. Yeah, he. 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 Build a Bear, but they had Elmo's head with the eyes X'd out on a pike with a Traitor on it. Which is. And again, not to this. This isn't a. This isn't a momdani thing. This is. That was biblical because all I saw that was, um, um, the king of the Jews that they hung above Jesus at the crucifixion because they would have the. 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.

Joe Patrice: Well, uh, I will say put aside 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 every day.

Chris Williams: That is very fair and true. Uh, uh, but also not m. A mere few hours after the Knicks, uh, 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, uh, Lewis Hamilton win his first, uh, race with Ferrari. Not his first race ever. All this is. He's won a whole bunch of those, uh, uh, but his first, um, for

Joe Patrice: Grand Prix as a Ferrari driver. Yeah.

Chris Williams: Grand Prix, Yes. Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Because he did win a sprint race last year.

Chris Williams: I guess that's fair. That is fair. He did in China. Uh, 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 Antonelli to win that race. And I still watched it because I'm a big Lewis fan. And, uh, my perseverance was rewarded.

Joe Patrice: Fewer legal crossovers with that one.

Chris Williams: What are you talking about? Lewis is dating a wannabe lawyer.

Joe Patrice: Oh, there you go. There you go. There you go. All right. I'm glad you managed to get that. I was. I was prepared to keep going on the NBA thing and talk about Wemby's, uh, how their two. Their two tiered justice system. As far as Wemby's flagrance.

Chris Williams: Well, that is very true.

Joe Patrice: Uh, what about.

Catherine Rubino: That's what you get for doubting Catherine.

Chris Williams: 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 is going to bro it out. But like, it was. I think it was a really interesting, uh, sort of take that. You know, there's a real moment of unity in New York right now. And that also applies to big law.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: The two things to getting law firm partners to Develop empathy. LSD and Nick wins.

Chris Williams: Like literally. Associates were like, they're not this nice on Christmas.

Joe Patrice: All right, let's move on to big stories of the week. I think, uh, one of the biggest ones, not necessarily the single biggest within any given week, but what will happen, you know, as the year goes on. Long tail, ultimately, long tail, long tail as we call it, become one of the biggest stories above the law. Released its Law School Rank 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, uh, with the purpose of creating a ranking that over put the thumb on the scale a little bit for return on investment. Uh, it'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 cost? If it costs too much, that, that's a ding, uh, that against a school. Not that, you know, expensive schools can't be good, but, you know, they were weighing all of those things. Uh, 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, uh, are trying to show.

Catherine Rubino: Do you think it's fair to say we're the most transparent rating system?

Joe Patrice: We are fairly transparent, uh, to the extent that somebody already, uh, one 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

Catherine Rubino: which we're so transparent can check our work.

Joe Patrice: That's the selling point.

Catherine Rubino: That's a selling point, Joe.

Joe Patrice: I know, that's what I mean.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Uh, you don't have that with the other, with the other ranking systems. Yeah, no. And 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 person.

Chris Williams: Yeah, different people have different, you know, desires, needs. You know, if you are fortunate enough to be blessed with money not being an option, you can weigh it differently. Yeah, the debt data's all there. You can play around.

Joe Patrice: So that is, uh, that is one of the other advantages. Uh, and I know that other ranking systems have started doing things, uh, like that after we did too, so that, you know, we started a trend there.

Chris Williams: 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.

Joe Patrice: So, yeah, they, they were not, I guess we weren't paying attention to the, uh, outcomes enough. Uh, because I don't think I, I guess this is a JD Advantage job that we currently have.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Wait, there's an advantage?

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: NYU did move up the rankings didn't grab the crack, the top 10, mind you, but it did move up. But yeah, it's something that I think is also a little bit different of the atl, uh, overall rankings is that they're a little bit more volatile than the traditional US News ones. I mean, listen, the US News ones have had a fair of volatility since they've been, you know, 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, is a lot of fun and, and kind of puts a different spin on things.

Joe Patrice: So Columbia, Yes, Columbia does may come in at seven. Uh, but you'll also see that, uh, like Harvard's not. And Stanford aren't on here either. Uh, Stanford, of course, the overall top school, uh, in many people's eyes right now, uh, they don't even make this list. Uh, Yale does. Uh, for shocking reasons. I guess they're. I guess they're counting as vice president as a job.

Chris Williams: I think there's a lot of weight put on, uh, clerkships too. Right.

Joe Patrice: That is true. So that, that is the one methodological choice that the ATL rankings make that I'm not sure we should give as much, as much credence.

Chris Williams: But we haven't said that yet. The who the overall winner of this year's is, which is University of Chicago moved up two places to take the number one spot this year.

Joe Patrice: Right.

Catherine Rubino: There should also be a Republican, uh, only clerk option in the rankings thing, considering that. Ah, I think. Then I think. Joe, didn't you write the story? They were saying that, um, if you're not a Trump supporter, you can't get this gig. Sort of.

Joe Patrice: That was a Department of labor job. But, uh, but it is a fair point.

Catherine Rubino: Ah.

Joe Patrice: And one that I've written a slightly different article about, which is that we, we don't break, uh, these things out. Uh, but 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, you know, people who have never been judges before who've never tried cases before, people who are, uh, you know, still associates at firms getting federal judgeships when that's happening. If the goal of a, uh, clerkship is to signify to a future employer that you went through an intensive mentorship program with a leader, uh, in the field, did you really do that in that instance? And so that subtle change with how they're recruiting Republican, uh, judges. And it's not all, obviously, 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.

Chris Williams: Sure.

Catherine Rubino: You could probably find out with AI at this point, though.

Joe Patrice: Well, you know, that's a great point. I'll bet AI would do a decent job of, uh, breaking all that down. Although a lot of these things aren't reported in obvious places. That's the, you know, like, um, the

Chris Williams: trick of it all.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, the Supreme Court ones. We still largely rely on gumshoe work from David Latt to get the list of who everybody is. Uh, well, let's take a break, and we'll be back with another story. Speaking of judges, uh, in a minute.

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Joe Patrice: All right, speaking of judges who may or may not have the best, uh, how do we put this? The, you know, teach the best life lessons, uh, temperament that you might want to stick with. Temperament. Yeah. So this was a story, uh, out of the ninth Circuit, uh, out in Idaho, uh, Judge Brian Nelson. You know, I think that the tagline for this is meet me in the park after school. I mean 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, uh, you know, in a different layer of the atmosphere as the driver. Uh, he parked this in a parking lot. Not within the lines, shall we say.

Chris Williams: That's just disrespectful.

Joe Patrice: Well, I mean that was the crux of my write up is whatever happens next in this story. And what happens next is wild. Uh, whatever happens next. The fact that he can't park actually should be the reason he loses his job.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: Outside the lines is generous. He parked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Yeah.

Chris Williams: 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.

Joe Patrice: That is correct.

Chris Williams: You know, in New York you're going to have to do a much better job of getting in those lines than Texas. Honestly, in Texas it's wild. I think you could put two of my cars in that spot in Texas.

Joe Patrice: Well, and that gets you to. This is out in Idaho. Uh, 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, in between the lines.

Catherine Rubino: Now that said, because he parked damn near orthogonal. I don't know how to say the word, but I know the word.

Chris Williams: 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. I. Yeah, I'm on the line, but I'm just. I'm just running to get my prescription or something. You know, you could almost. This seems like deliberate.

Joe Patrice: Well, no, no. We live in a society. Uh, that is not. That is not almost.

Chris Williams: You could almost forgive someone.

Joe Patrice: No, that, that. That nonsense is not an excuse. Now, he actually does, uh, 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, uh, bullshit excuse that Catherine's talking about.

Chris Williams: Wow.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Wow.

Joe Patrice: We have to live in a nation of laws.

Chris Williams: Uh, listen, listen, I.

Joe Patrice: If you're only in for a couple minutes, then why just park across?

Chris Williams: That was a cross.

Joe Patrice: Two handicapped spots on top of orphans.

Chris Williams: There's a very different. I think those things are different.

Joe Patrice: All right.

Chris Williams: Like there's a difference between a misdemeanor and a fellow and a felony. That is. We are also a nation of laws. And they can still have degrees.

Joe Patrice: Speaking of misdemeanors, he's, uh, charged with a couple, uh, which is, uh. This is the one place where I'll kind of side with him. Uh, the. 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. So he didn't need m. He kind of was.

Catherine Rubino: To be fair, when the judges parked in three different aisles, it's hard not to park next to him.

Chris Williams: See?

Joe Patrice: 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.

Chris Williams: No. Cause he seems like the exact. The. Not the judge. But the passage seems like the same kind of asshole as you are. You're like, there's a nation of rules here. Well, you have violated our common understanding, and I'm going to call you out on that.

Joe Patrice: And I think he needed to be called out. I don't know that you needed to park next to him. Anyway, he is the urinal rule in

Catherine Rubino: effect when it comes to parking, right?

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Catherine Rubino: He was a leave one. Yeah.

Joe Patrice: So he gets out, uh, and, well, he's calling him out for his bad parking. Uh, this is where the, uh, where the person who is presumed to be the judge, uh, in this video Appears to sort of lose it. Goes with the excuse that they were only in for a couple minutes. Uh, then swats either glasses or sunglasses off of the face of the other person. Uh, 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. Uh, 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. Uh, it is, it's not, you know, it's not exactly jets vs Sharks, as I say, but it is a goofy little battle.

Catherine Rubino: Please tell me he was in robes.

Joe Patrice: He was he in robes? Oh, that would be amazing.

Catherine Rubino: I was like, oh, this has to be the Onion.

Joe Patrice: 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 an argument with somebody. And it's like, it's, 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, the gas station.

Chris Williams: Just take that off, it'll be fine. The real key here is what's the over under on professor, uh, at the University of Idaho College of Law deciding to use a similar scenario as an issue spotter. Because, uh, there's a couple of things there that you might want to be pointing out.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, I think I, uh, think there's some issues spotting here. Yeah, it's just not the best. Uh, there's some conversation about whether or not, uh, it was an emotional time for him, blah, blah, blah, which, sure,

Chris Williams: but everyone has private lives you know nothing about.

Joe Patrice: But, but this goes back to why one, I find the parking to be way more offensive. A punch is a punch.

Catherine Rubino: But this parking job, I know this is, this is, this is one of those things where like, the medium is the message and you need to see, you need to hear another message. You're just hearing us, but you need to see this.

Chris Williams: You need to see this.

Joe Patrice: But I also think, and I think Gabe Roth of Fix the Court makes this a good point. He's, you know, arguing the ethics issues generally. But one side issue he brings up, which I think, uh, 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, uh, at the Ninth Circuit. This is the same sort of situation with the, uh, when now retiring, I guess. Roger Benitez of the 9th Circuit handcuffed that crying girl. We, we only know about that because. Because we reported it. Uh, 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, uh, especially in a high profile job like that, and you don't necessarily need to drag it all out, uh, into the public when it's frivolous. But there has to be a balance where transparency isn't completely lost. Uh, and it is a problem that we're only learning about this because the Idaho newspaper managed to dig into it. You know, all right, we should probably stop here and then, you know, have another conversation about judicial ethics. All right, so we're back talking more about Judge Eleanor.

Catherine Rubino: More about inappropriate parking.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're talking about Judge Eleanor Ross, who was getting tickets in her chambers from. So she, uh. 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. Uh, this obviously has some extortion risk tied to it, but it also has, uh, she lied to investigators, uh, when confronted with this. Uh, those are not good things. She, uh, is still on the bench. She just recused herself from the major case that she's been working on. But still there, there are imp. There's an impeachment inquiry underway 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 punishment was you don't get to be chief judge. And it's like, oh, I don't have to do annoying extra work. But arguably the one real punishment was that she had to write apology letters to her clerks. In the report, 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.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: The New York Times got a hold of the letter, uh, and it is. Well, it was a little vague.

Chris Williams: So she, she did what she said she was going to do. She did follow through. You have to. Right.

Joe Patrice: So it was a three sentence letter. Uh, this is her apology letter for banging a cop in the, uh, in the chambers. Uh, 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.

Catherine Rubino: That's a Dear John letter.

Joe Patrice: It's not great. Uh, that's what we're breaking up now.

Catherine Rubino: That's not an I'm sorry.

Joe Patrice: So there's also a bit of a conspiracy theory out there. Whether, uh, 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 Pryor 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 matters? Now, one, I think she did follow through because you gave her a lot of latitude, which you probably shouldn't have, too. But to the extent that. That she did, uh, that. 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, uh, he sees no need for further. No need for further action.

Chris Williams: This is at best, I think, like a footnote in this whole sordid affair. Like, it's not great. But she said she was gonna do that.

Joe Patrice: 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. Uh, and, you know, and me back to, you know, just. Just to show that I did see that Josh Blackman's also saying that this is a problem, uh, over at the Volcan 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, 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 agree, uh, it is rare that I find myself in full agreement with, with Professor Blackmon 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.

Chris Williams: And not only signed off, like, said that they weren't even gonna tell us who it was.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah, they tried to keep this anonymous, if you recall, until, uh, we cracked the code with AI.

Catherine Rubino: Yeah, I rarely hear bad apple arguments for judges, but that is what's happening.

Joe Patrice: 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 this person's identity hidden did nothing wrong. And we should all, you know, let bygones be bygones, because removing them, you know, removes people from our, uh, quote, unquote, our side.

Catherine Rubino: Hey, if you're trying to get ajab entered into, like, part of the, like, the common conversation, I'm cool with it.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Well, anything, uh, else?

Chris Williams: No, that's all right.

Joe Patrice: Well, thanks, everybody, for listening. Uh, you should subscribe to the show, uh, 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. Oh, I was just going to say, like, writing things actually helps more. They. They weigh that a little bit more. That's what I was trying to say. Next, you should listen to the Jabot Katherine's other podcast. I'm also a, uh, guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalists roundtable. Uh, you've got other shows from the legal talk network that you can check out. Uh, you should be reading above the Law, so you read these and other stories before we talk about. Um, uh, there's all sorts of social media that you could be following. Like, at above the law.com, i'm at Joce, she's at Catford One. Chris is at Rights for Rent. And, uh. Yeah, peace.

Catherine Rubino: Bye. Peace.