1. Progressives are waking up to the importance of younger nominees for federal judges.
But one reason why it's so important hasn't gotten enough attention yet: circuit chief judgeships.
2. Circuit chief judges wield real power. Their control of opinion assignments and administrative control make them the most powerful non-Scotus federal judges. (@marinklevy and Judge Newman have an article on the way in @PennLRev on the office of the chief judge.)
3. Who becomes circuit chief is complicated, but the key part is that you can't become chief once you turn 65.
In practice, this means that younger nominees are far more likely to become chief than older ones.
4. The Third Circuit illustrates how this plays out.
McKee (commissioned at 47) was chief til '16. He stepped down early so that Smith (50) could become chief before he was too old. Smith will be succeeded by Chagares (43), then likely Hardiman (41).
5. Absent something unexpected, none of Obama's 5 appointees will be chief because they'll all already be too old when Hardiman's term as chief ends in 2035. Instead, Hardiman will be succeeded by Trump's nominee Matey (47).
6. Obama's CA3 appointees were 52, 56, 51, 46, and 56. If they'd been as young as Chagares and Hardiman, one of them would be following them as circuit chief.
They weren't, so probably they won't.
7. Because Bush II and Trump chose younger CA3 nominees than Obama did, if everything follows the normal course then the Third Circuit won't have a D-appointed chief judge from 2016 until at least 2042.
That's huge.
8. Progressives finally are starting to realize the importance of younger federal-judge nominees.
The power of circuit chief judgeships makes the stakes even higher. /end
(What do I mean by "likely," "the normal course," etc above? Basically I'm assuming everyone will be chief when eligible to, instead of deferring, stepping down early, going senior, retiring, being elevated to Scotus, or dying.)
Another way of looking at how important younger nominees are for controlling circuit CJ slots.
Hardiman is in line to be CJ from 2028-35. If he'd just been same age at commissioning as Obama's *youngest* CA3 judge, he'd be age-barred and Krause would be CJ those 7 years instead.
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1. Some legal-writing advice meant esp for first-gen law students.
College taught me that the key to good writing was originality. 1L-year exams taught me that sounding like a lawyer was about spotting every issue.
To become a good legal writer, I had to unlearn both lessons.
2. Good legal writing isn't about coming up with clever new ideas or expressing them in a unique new way. And it's nothing at all like an issue-spotting final exam.
Good legal writing is about clarity.
3. Once you figure out what your most important points are, your job—your only job, more or less—is to state them as clearly as possible.
When McConnell does things like demand Ds honor R circuit blue slips in 2009 or demand Ds honor R filibusters in 2021, despite not doing those things for Ds when he was in power, the problem isn't hypocrisy. It's worse.
McConnell isn't failing to honor his own principles. McConnell's only guiding principle is "If the rules don't prevent it and it adds to GOP power, we'll do it." He's quite consistent about following it.
So when McConnell demands that Ds do this or that, he's simply try to keep Ds from using their power the way he uses his. And why not? It's always worked for him before.
A strong opinion that many of my fellow progressives may strongly disagree with: Biden should put Orin Kerr, a fairly conservative Republican, on the Ninth Circuit.
Look, I anticipate spending the next 4 years mad at the Biden admin for being too timid with judicial nominations. I firmly believe Biden needs to play by the new rules, not the old ones. The days of Ds slowly nominating a bunch of mid-50s moderate prosecutors are over.
Big-picture, Biden's job is to unskew our Trump/Leo-skewed courts. In my view that means putting a lot of brilliant, dynamic, solidly progressive 30- and 40-something black women in circuit seats.
There's growing willingness to acknowledge the ways in which Trump's work of building and clinging to power resemble Hitler's. Good.
But this week the history that keeps flashing in my mind isn't Nazi Germany, it's pre-WWII Japan's May 15 Incident.
A thread. 1/
Japan after WWI was a two-party parliamentary constitutional democracy. The government functioned reasonably well into the 30s, weathering the depression better than its peers in the US and Europe. 2/
But a right-wing anti-democratic cancer took root in the lower ranks of the Japanese military. This cancer led to Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the assassination of a former cabinet minister in 1932. 3/