The
Federalist
Society’s
National
Lawyers
Convention
got
wild
yesterday.
As
wild
as
a
gathering
of
right-wing
lawyers
can
get,
anyway.
Actually,
I
guess
the
wildest
a
gathering
of
right-wing
lawyers
can
get
was
January
6,
so
this
was
just
slightly
less
than
the
wildest
a
gathering
of
right-wing
lawyers
can
get.
Fifth
Circuit
Judge
Edith
Jones
took
the
opportunity
of
sitting
next
to
Georgetown
University
Law
Center
Professor
Steve
Vladeck
to
go,
I
believe
the
technical
term
is
“absolutely
bonkers.”
An
eye-popping
and
eye-rolling
meltdown
from
a
federal
judge.
Let’s
not
undersell
this…
conservatives
were
aghast
at
her
behavior:
It
all
went
down
at
the
panel
on
The
Continued
Independence
of
the
Judiciary,
featuring
Jones
and
Vladeck
along
with
Paul
Weiss’s
Kannon
Shanmugam,
Washington
University
St.
Louis
Law
School
Professor
Dan
Epps,
and
moderated
by
fellow
Fifth
Circuit
Judge
James
Ho.
(It
starts
at
14:04.
For
some
reason
automatic
timestamps
aren’t
working.
Sorry.)
The
panel
begins
as
a
relatively
straightforward
academic
talk,
with
Vladeck
expounding
upon
the
problems
with
the
Supreme
Court’s
reliance
on
the
“shadow
docket”
to
issue
rapid,
unsupported
legal
rulings
and
the
risk
this
poses
to
faith
in
the
judiciary.
He
did
not
address
the
issue
of
single-judge
courthouse
shopping,
a
practice
that’s
notoriously
employed
within
the
Fifth
Circuit,
where
plaintiffs
can
file
their
claim
in
tiny
courthouses
without
fear
that
it
will
be
randomly
assigned
to
a
judge
within
the
district,
but
rather
knowing
with
certainty
that
it
will
go
to
the
lone
judge
sitting
in
that
courthouse.
But
that’s
all
Judge
Jones
wanted
to
talk
about,
so
here
we
go.
Professor
Vladeck
has
left
the
Fifth
Circuit
and
the
Fifth
Circuit
is
happy
to
announce
that
Professor
Vladeck
will
soon
be
criticizing
the
Ninth
Circuit
and
the
DC
Circuit,
where
I
believe
many
initiatives
of
the
Trump
administration
will
find
an
immediate
litigating
home
and
a
federal
judiciary
that
is
at
least
90%
appointed
by
presidents
whose
appointments
have
not
been
criticized.
This
is
the
sort
of
weird
“own
the
libs”
rhetoric
that
often
finds
its
way
into
conservative
legal
opinions
but
is
nonetheless
vapid.
The
critique
of
the
judge
shopping
problem
in
the
Fifth
Circuit
isn’t
about
finding
a
vaguely
friendly
audience,
but
on
the
threat
to
legitimacy
presented
when
litigants
create
artificial
ties
to
bumblefuck
locations
in
order
to
tie
the
hands
of
the
whole
federal
government.
Suing
the
FDA
in
DC
and
taking
a
turn
at
the
judge
assignment
wheel
doesn’t
carry
the
same
concerns
as
a
case
against
the
FDA
with
the
one
judge
you
know
sits
in
Amarillo.
This
is
fast
forwarding
a
bit,
but
Jones
will
never
even
attempt
to
address
this
specific
defect
in
her
loony
rant.
But
we’ll
offer
her
every
unearned
benefit
of
the
doubt
and
suggest
that
she
could
be
arguing
that
—
fundamentally
—
having
a
100
percent
chance
of
drawing
a
Matthew
Kacsmaryk
for
an
abortion
case
is
no
different
than
having
a
95
percent
chance
of
drawing
someone
in
the
Northern
District
of
California
appointed
by
a
Democrat
(there
is
one
G.W.
Bush
senior
status
judge
still
hearing
cases
in
the
district)
to
hear
a
challenge
to
mass
deportation.
If
that’s
the
comparison
she’s
trying
to
make,
it’s
weak.
Different
judges
are,
well,
different.
An
older
Clinton
judge
might
not
see
a
case
the
same
as
a
younger
Biden
judge.
A
Clinton
judge
confirmed
by
the
post-Contract
With
America
Senate
will
be
different
than
an
early
Obama
judge
confirmed
with
a
near
supermajority.
This
argument
is
just
categorically
different
than
allowing
plaintiffs
to
choose
a
single
judge.
For
the
record,
Jones
will
eventually
quote
Vladeck
addressing
this
issue
in
the
past
and
noting
that
none
of
the
California
judges
are
as
ideologically
committed
to
the
“left”
as
Kacsmaryk
—
a
former
lawyer
for
an
activist
conservative
religious
group
—
is
to
the
“right.”
Jones
dismisses
this
as
“if
that’s
not
an
attack
on
the
character
of
the
judge,
I
don’t
know
what
is.”
In
other
words,
she
does
not
know
what
one
is.
But
we’re
not
even
going
to
have
that
debate,
because
Jones
is
off
in
her
own
little
world.
Back
in
the
1970s,
there
was
one
judge
in
Tyler,
Texas
named
William
Wayne
Justice,
and
the
government
and
the
ACLU
liked
to
file
suit
in
Tyler,
Texas,
because
William
Wayne
Justice
was
the
arbiter
of
the
constitutional
law….
And
in
that
role,
he
ran
the
Texas
prison
system,
the
Texas
Mental
health
and
retardation
system,
the
Texas
juvenile
justice
system,
and
when
he
tried
to
take
over
the
Texas
education
system,
the
Fifth
Circuit
finally
said
that
was
maybe
a
bridge
too
far.
That
is
what
you
call
judge
picking.
Sure…
except,
in
these
prepared
remarks
the
only
devious
liberal
example
of
judge
picking
she
could
find
involved:
the
Texas
prison
system,
the
Texas
mental
disabilities
program,
and
the
Texas
juvenile
justice
system.
This
seems
significant
that
these
are
all
TEXAS
programs
litigated
in
TEXAS.
A
plaintiff
who
legitimately
resides
in
a
far-flung
rural
area
of
Texas
might
have
a
beef
against
the
state
government
wholly
within
that
jurisdiction.
That’s
a
whole
order
different
than
the
present
controversy
about
a
judge
in
Amarillo
imposing
a
national
ban
based
on
a
challenge
brought
by
non-Texans
setting
up
a
straw
organization
in
town
to
attack
a
nationwide
FDA
regulation.
At
least
when
Judge
Ho
tried
to
concoct
a
defense
of
this
practice,
he
spun
a
story
drenched
in
disingenuous
rhetoric
about
preserving
local
access
to
justice.
It
made
no
sense
either,
but
at
least
it
was
structured
to
address
THE
ACTUAL
ISSUE
AT
HAND.
I
hasten
to
point
out
that
when
[Vladeck]
was
filing
his
complaints,
his
articles,
his
amicus
briefs,
his
tweets,
calling
out
by
name…
started
out
with
Judge
Kacsmaryk,
went
to
judge
Reed
O’Connor,
later
on
included
Judge
Mark
Pitman,
Judge
Cam
Barker,
Judge
Jeremy
Kernodle
—
that’s
an
awful
lot
of
single
judges,
I
might
add
—
But
he
singled
them
all
out
for
criticism,
and
yet
the
actual
litigators
in
that
case,
which
was
often
the
US
government,
did
not
move
to
change
venue.
They
did
not
move
to
recuse
these
judges…
they
did
not
even
question
the
judge’s
integrity.
I’m
not
sure
she
even
understands
the
issue
here.
As
a
litigant,
the
DOJ
did
not
challenge
these
assignments
because
we
all
agree
that
this
is
how
the
law
currently
works.
Vladeck
is
not
disputing
that
this
is
what
the
law
currently
says,
he’s
making
a
normative
argument
that
it
should
not
work
that
way.
That’s
a
policy
question
above
the
pay
grade
of
any
litigant
in
a
specific
case.
It’s
why
the
Judicial
Conference
—
headed
by
a
Republican
judge
and
ultimately
answerable
to
a
Republican
Chief
Justice
—
went
out
of
its
way
to
pass
a
rule
to
change
this
process.
The
proposed
rule
was
limited
to
civil
actions
that
seek
to
bar
or
mandate
state
or
federal
actions,
“whether
by
declaratory
judgment
and/or
any
form
of
injunctive
relief,”
and
required
districts
in
those
cases
which
clearly
have
no
limited
geographic
tie
to
any
out-of-the-way
courthouse
to
be
assigned
through
a
district-wide
random
selection
process.
Jones
calls
this
a
“strange
idea”
and
revels
in
the
Fifth
Circuit
refusing
to
comply,
claiming
that
the
Conference
has
no
authority
over
them
because
district
assignments
are
governed
by
statute.
The
Conference
ceded
the
point.
Some
just
want
to
see
the
world
burn.
As
Professor
Vladeck
conceded,
while
he’s
complaining
about
single
judge
courthouses,
he
understands
it’s
the
law
and
that
Congress
can
change
it
if
he
can
lobby
them
to
do
that.
This
is
sort
of
a
side
issue
in
the
grand
scheme
of
this,
but
later
in
the
talk
she
characterized
the
prospect
of
legislation
to
reform
this
process
as
a
threat.
Almost
as
though
this
“just
lobby
Congress”
concession
was
entirely
disingenuous.
Oh
snap!
She
brought
a
visual
aide!
This
purports
to
be
her
collection
of
Vladeck’s
writings
on
the
subject.
What
good
faith
reason
would
she
have
for
bringing
that
to
a
panel
when
Vladeck
isn’t
even
talking
about
single-judge
courthouses?
Hush
now.
Stop
asking
silly
questions.
“This
is
not
ad
hominem,
professor,”
she
begins,
sounding
the
universal
signal
that
this
is
very
much
going
to
be
ad
hominem.
Most
folks
misunderstand
what
ad
hominem
means
and
use
it
as
a
synonym
for
insults.
That’s
not
necessarily
the
case.
It
refers
to
the
logical
fallacy
of
substituting
reasoned,
substantive
argument
with
claims
that
the
audience
shouldn’t
believe
the
other
side
simply
because
they
are,
supposedly,
just
a
bad
person.
And
that
has
little
to
do
with
whether
or
not
there
are
any
“insults”
involved.
But
in
this
case,
Jones
replaced
a
substantive
explanation
why
she
thinks
it’s
good
for
the
judiciary
to
have
Potemkin
Plaintiffs
running
to
single-judge
courthouses
seeking
national
injunctions
with
the
idea
that
Steve
Vladeck
is
mean
on
Twitter.
Making
her
stunt
very
much
ad
hominem,
something
that
Dan
Epps
correctly
pointed
out,
breaking
his
silence
during
the
scuffle
to
note
that
this
was
all
a
whole
lot
of
rhetorical
fallacy.
This
is
at
1:17:00
or
so
and
it’s
worth
watching
as
high
comedic
performance
art.
Jones
is
going
to
read
clips
to
prove
that
Vladeck
attacks
judges
personally.
As
a
taste…
Well,
I’ll
read
you
a
few
tweet.
uh,
November
18th
of
2022.
Someone
says,
“isn’t
judge
picking
a
practice
as
old
as
the
sun
done
by
both
sides?”
Professor
Vladeck
says,
“nope,
forum
shopping
is,
but
literally
picking
a
single
judge
is
a
relatively
new
phenomenon
available
only
in
a
handful
of
(primarily
red)
states.”
So…
not
a
personal
attack
on
a
judge.
Maybe
the
others
will
get
more
direct
(they
will
not).
Jones:
Here’s
Judge
Hendrix
denying
DOJ’s
motion
to
transfer.
One
of
the
articles…Vladeck:
What
was
the
attack
in
that?Jones:
[Slams
table]
Pretty
much
sums
it
up.
But
Jones
has
one
more
bonkers
conclusion
to
close
off
this
trip
through
the
Magical
Folder
Of
Mundane:
The
consequence
of
all
this
is,
Judge
Kacsmaryk
is
under
24
hour
day
protection.
He
has
five
kids.
someone
has
been
indicted
for
a
depth
threat
against
him.
Ahem.
Seriously,
is
that
the
consequence
of
criticizing
district
judge
assignment
rules?
Because
it’s
probably
the
result
of
his
abortion
pill
opinion
that
even
this
Supreme
Court
thought
so
poorly
thought
out
that
it
unceremoniously
kicked
it
to
the
curb.
That’s
not
the
assignment
rules.
That’s
the
ruling.
As
Professor
Brian
Frye
put
it,
“The
idea
that
anyone
would
threaten
the
life
of
a
federal
judge
based
on
a
disagreement
about
how
to
apply
venue
rules
is
frankly
risible.”
Maybe
that’s
too
far…
maybe
there’s
a
1L
out
there
whose
civil
procedure
final
was
totally
wrecked
by
the
Fifth
Circuit’s
position
and
they
missed
out
on
law
review
and
want
revenge!
Probably
not…
let’s
go
with
risible.
But
if
it
has
anything
to
do
with
assignment
rules,
it’s
that
the
existing
judge
picking
system
—
put
aside
whether
or
not
the
judges
are
ACTUALLY
in
the
tank
for
one
side
or
the
other
—
feeds
the
impression
that
the
litigants
do
see
judges
as
bought
and
paid
for
toys.
That’s
bad
for
the
judiciary.
You’d
think
a
judge
might
want
to
make
a
simple
change
that,
likely
without
actually
changing
the
outcome,
would
stifle
that
impression.
Instead,
they’re
just
going
to
blame
anyone
questioning
judge
shopping
for
inspiring
death
threats.
As
always,
these
are
just
not
serious
people.
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law
and
co-host
of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
Feel
free
to email
any
tips,
questions,
or
comments.
Follow
him
on Twitter or
Bluesky
if
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Joe
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Managing
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