A Moment of Smug Satisfaction

As I have made no efforts to hide, I am a lawyer. Some may say that implies that I have a forked tongue and cloven hoof, but if that is the case, I haven't seen it and tend to base my evaluations on the actual evidence and not my own prejudices. Nonetheless . . .

I have noted that one of the big triumphs that my conservative friends see in the Trump administration is the theft of Merrick Garland's seat on the Supreme Court and handing it over to the interloper Justice Gorsuch. This is an irreversible development. Mark my word, not again in my lifetime will the U.S. Senate confirm a Supreme Court Nominee from the opposing party. I find this to be a troubling development for the legitimacy of the Court as a non-partisan, counter-majoritarian institution. However, with all of that being said, this post is about the nominees put forth for the lower federal judgeships, i.e. trial court and "intermediate" court of appeals.

For those who haven't heard of Brett Talley, he was the first embarrassingly unqualified nominee to hold an Article III judgeship that President Agent Orange put forth. Apparently actually "practicing law" or even having a "working understanding and knowledge" of the courts and their procedures is not necessary to be a Trump judicial nominee - you just have to be liked by the Federalist Society (a right-wing organization on every law school campus in America).

In light of this, Senator Kennedy (R-LA) had an interesting interchange with another one of Trump's nominees. I have posted the video below:

Now, for starters, I will readily concede that I take some smug satisfaction watching this "elite" struggle with elementary questions. For those keeping track at home, the Daubert (pronounced DOWbert) standard refers to a case the Supreme Court decided that had to do with what makes someone an expert. Motions in Limine are pre-trial motions where you attempt to persuade the judge to keep certain evidence from the jury. The abstention doctrines (Pullman and Younger) deal with situations where the federal court should NOT decide a case (I may be getting them backwards, but Pullman says that federal courts can't rule not he constitutionality of a state law until the state court weighs in on how the state law should be interpreted; Younger says that you can't bring a civil rights case in federal court that is related to a pending state court matter - i.e. you can't bring a civil rights lawsuit against IMPD for violating your 4th Amendment rights when they bursted into your home and found your box full of cocaine and dead body).

Like I said, I take some smug satisfaction in being able to recall these things while Mr. "Article III, Lifetime Tenure, Irreducible Salary" future judge (who invariably believes that people who draw a check from the government are moochers and don't have real jobs . . . huh) struggles. One small point is that Sen. Kennedy's focus on abstention doctrine seems a bit misguided, as it is a doctrine that is rarely invoked. Additionally, I feel like Sen. Kennedy's grandstanding is a bit beside the larger point: So many of these people are rated unqualified by the American Bar Association not because they are unable to recall details that, to non-litigators, are trivial; rather, they are rated unqualified because they have reactionary views that fail to respect and adhere to centuries of legal tradition.

Look, the law wasn't written in a day. We can go back to the Magna Carta, or for that matter the Ten Commandments, to seek the genesis of our legal system. It has taken  a long time to get where it is. We don't need a bunch of reactionary (or radical) ideologues intent on overturning centuries of thoughtful jurisprudence.

I know this is a bit of an obscure issue for many people. Please bear in mind that each and every judge who is confirmed will be on the bench for decades and will shape the law in this country in ways large and small, predictable and otherwise. When handing that kind of power to someone, I would think that careful consideration would be appropriate.