Supreme Ambitions (15 page)

After spending half an hour staring at the bare walls of my windowless office—since we were there for just a year, clerks generally didn't bother decorating—I decided I needed to talk to the judge and update her on the latest developments. I feared that she'd blow up at me for failing to make the problem go away, but I didn't have much of an alternative. If I continued to try and handle this on my own, only to see it get worse and worse, I'd be in much deeper trouble than if I had kept her in the loop the whole time. (Yes, I watched ABC Afterschool Specials as a child.)

I printed out my email exchange with A3G and went in to see Judge Stinson. I tried to manage her expectations as soon as I crossed the threshold into her office: “Judge, I'm afraid I have some bad news.”

I handed the printout to the judge and seated myself in one of the visitor's chairs as I watched her read. Anger flashed across her face for a moment, before she started shaking her head in a “no” motion—while smiling.

“For someone who writes a blog about the federal judiciary, this Article III Groupie has a very naive view of the judicial role,” Judge Stinson said. “She seems to think we still live in the age of Justice Jackson, with
judges laboring for hours on the language in each opinion, like Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. I decide hundreds of cases each year. Do you think I have the time to write each one of those opinions myself?”

“I don't think that would be possible, at least here on the Ninth Circuit. Maybe on the Supreme Court, which hears under a hundred cases a year.”

“But even the justices don't write their own opinions! Judges today aren't writers, but managers. I am the CEO of this chambers: I use my expert judgment and accumulated wisdom to make the big, important decisions. As the president who appointed me famously said, ‘I am the decider.' The president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, decides whom we fight and when, but we don't expect him to drive a tank. Similarly, I decide how a case should come out—like
Geidner
, say—and my team executes. The president didn't appoint me to this job so that I could dither over whether to cite this case or that one for the summary judgment standard. Legal analysis is for little people.”

I laughed, then caught myself. Was I one of the “little people”?

“Sorry, don't get me wrong. Legal analysis is very important. But I'm comfortable leaving it in the hands of my very capable law clerks.”

“Whom you've hired and trained, of course.”

“Exactly—and whom I continue to oversee, even if I don't micromanage. Some judges take pride in drowning their clerks' drafts in red ink, but that's not my approach. I don't believe in editing for the sake of editing; it's a waste of time and resources. If a clerk gives me a good draft opinion that reaches the right result for the right reasons, I'm not going to take the thing apart and put it back together again just for kicks, or to gratify my own ego by putting the opinion more in my own voice.”

“I have a friend clerking for Judge Gottlieb right now, and that's what he does—he edits his clerks so heavily that he basically rewrites their work.”

“That's just judicial self-indulgence. Some judges enjoy getting down in the weeds, arguing with their clerks over the meaning of some patch
of dicta in a Supreme Court case, or how to word a particular case parenthetical in a footnote. These judges are actually insecure—they feel they have something to prove, they want to show they've still got it when it comes to legal analysis.

“I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous,” the judge continued, putting the printout down on her desk and pressing her hand to her collarbone. “Does anyone think that
I
couldn't do detail-oriented legal analysis if I had to? I served on the
California Law Review
, graduated near the top of my class at Boalt Hall, clerked for a federal judge, and made partner at one of the country's top law firms. Trust me—I can do legal analysis if I want to.”

I wanted to give the judge a round of applause; her indignation was nothing short of magnificent. But this still left us with the problem of Beneath Their Robes.

“So Judge,” I said after a respectful pause, “what should we do about Article III Groupie?”

“It's simple: since she's not willing to play ball, we have to neutralize her. For now, write back to her and say that you can't answer her specific questions without violating your duty of confidentiality as a law clerk. Then find out who she is in real life, and destroy her.”

This raised so many questions. How was I supposed to unmask Article III Groupie? And how was I supposed to “destroy her”? I was a law clerk, not a hit man. Law clerk orientation focused on things like Westlaw research and standards of review, not blogger assassination.

“But Judge,” I said, “A3G writes under a pseudonym. I don't know very much about blogging or technology. How can I obtain her real-life identity?”

“You're a smart girl—figure it out. But fast. Take her out before she takes me out.”

“Wake up, Coyne!”

I startled and sat up. It took me a few seconds to get my bearings. I had fallen asleep at my desk, resting my forehead against my forearms. James stood in my office doorway, holding a giant sheaf of papers held together with a black binder clip.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It's 8 o'clock on Thursday morning. Hey … isn't that the same outfit you were wearing yesterday?”

I looked down at myself. Yes, I was wearing the same navy suit I had worn to the office on Wednesday—although it didn't look quite so crisp on day two.

“Crap! I need to run home and shower and come back. I was here all night working on the
Geidner
bench memo, which the judge wants by tomorrow afternoon so she can read it over the weekend.”

“Well, congratulations,” James said, tossing the sheaf of papers onto my desk. “It looks like you finished. It was hogging the printer—I had to refill the paper tray.”

“Thanks,” I said, picking up the memo and flipping through it. “Sixty-two pages—my longest bench memo yet. But it's rough. I wanted to finish it by this morning so I could work on revising it today and tomorrow. I need what I give to Judge Stinson to be my best work product.”

“How did it feel writing a bench memo where the conclusion was given to you in advance?”

“It wasn't that bad, actually. It felt like a law school assignment or moot court case where you're just given a side and have to work with it. There are decent arguments on both sides.”

I stood up from my desk to get going—and felt slightly dizzy. I was more exhausted than I realized. Even after my morning coffee, I still wouldn't be in the best shape.

“Hey,” I said, “can I ask you a favor? I could use another pair of eyes on this bench memo, since it's so important and I'm so zonked. Would you mind reading it over and giving me an edit?”

“No problem,” said James, taking the memo as I handed it to him. “Happy to. This is going to be the biggest case we have in chambers the whole year. I'll start reading right now and we can talk this afternoon.”

“Thanks a ton. I remember you had some good thoughts on the careful line the judge has to walk here in light of her … aspirations. I owe you.”

I hustled home to shower and change so that I could be back in chambers before the judge, who usually arrived between nine and ten. When I got back to my apartment, I discovered that my only clean outfit was my least favorite one, a cream-colored pantsuit that I had picked out with my mother before law school. I had been working such long hours over the past few days that I had completely neglected the practicalities of life. The suit was a little wrinkled; I hung it in the bathroom while I showered to try and steam out the creases.

Fortunately, most of the wrinkles came out, and fortunately, I made it back into chambers before Judge Stinson. I still didn't feel that great, but at least I looked presentable, and I made it through the morning with the aid of three cups of coffee.

The clerks had our usual lunch in the chambers library, but Amit and Larry finished and excused themselves fairly quickly; they were both busy with their own bench memos. James and I remained to talk over
Geidner
.

“So,” said James, putting my magnum opus on the conference table, “I read your memo.”

Why was I so nervous? Don't react defensively, I told myself. You asked James to read the memo because you want it to be as strong as possible. Don't let your ego get in the way.

“Thanks again—and thanks for turning it around so fast. I realize it must have been quite the slog.”

“Actually, it was fun to read. I caught a few typos, probably just from you being so tired, and I think the summary of Judge Nathanson's ruling can be tightened. But honestly, as you'll see when you look at my mark-up, there's very little I'd change here. You did a great job.”

“Really?” The insecure little girl in me could hardly believe the praise.

“Really. Like your point about how conventional equal protection analysis can't be mechanically applied to ‘the right to get married' because this case is all about the definition of marriage itself—in other words, what we talk about when we talk about marriage, and whether the ‘marriage' right extends to same-sex couples. Or your point about how our society is currently engaged in a profound and spirited discussion over the meaning of marriage, and how the courts owe both sides the right to democratic debate—that the winners deserve an honest victory, and the losers a fair defeat. You're a very strong writer, Audrey.”

“Wow,” I said, my voice wavering a bit, “that's … so nice of you to say.”

“It's the truth. I'm very objective when I put on my editor's hat; just ask the student note writers I terrified back when I was at Berkeley. I've given you my honest opinion, not at all colored by … any feelings I might have.”

Before I knew what I was doing, my hand was on top of his, James was leaning toward me, I was leaning toward him, and we were kissing. But I broke the kiss quickly—and not just because we were in the chambers library.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know where that came from. Lack of sleep is getting to me.”

A wounded look flickered over James's face.

“So … was that just a one-time thing?” he asked. “Have I misread
things between us?”

“No, it's not that—not that at all. Because … I also think there's something here. I just think we should revisit this when we are—or when I am, at least—in a better frame of mind. And not in the chambers library.”

“Okay. I'm glad to hear that. Because—and I have to say, this surprised me a bit—you kiss as well as you write.”

After revising my
Geidner
bench memo with the help of James's excellent edits, I submitted it to Judge Stinson on Friday at the end of the day (so she could take it with her to Malibu over the weekend). After catching up on sleep on Friday night, I headed into chambers on Saturday morning to resume my other mission: finding and destroying Article III Groupie.

As I surfed through my usual favorite law-nerd blogs—SCOTUSblog, the Volokh Conspiracy, Balkinization, PrawfsBlawg, Concurring Opinions, Simple Justice—I found a fresh post from How Appealing that was perfectly on point:

“I have reason to believe that the author of Beneath Their Robes is an employee of the federal government.”

Posted at 01:22 PM EST by Howard Bashman

How could Bashman have figured this out about Article III Groupie? All I had was the website address, http://beneaththeirrobes.com/, and an anonymous email address,
[email protected]
. Bashman didn't have A3G's name, but he knew more about her than I did. And it seemed that, contrary to the claim in her bio that she was an associate at a large law firm, she actually worked for the federal government. This made me wonder: What else about her bio might be manufactured? Could it actually be a ruse?

This was one research project that Westlaw or Lexis couldn't help me with, so I turned to the almighty Google. My reading informed me that the key to solving this puzzle was the IP address, the four-number
identifier associated with a particular computer on a network. Numbers scared me a little—an affliction common among lawyers—but thankfully no math was necessary. I just needed to find out Article III Groupie's IP address and see what it matched.

Thanks again to Google, this wasn't hard. I found my last email exchange with A3G—which had ended when I told her I couldn't answer her specific questions about Judge Stinson due to judge-clerk confidentiality—and followed the steps set forth online for opening up email headers. A3G's IP address: 206.18.146.144. I then fed this into a website for looking up the organization associated with a given IP address. The organization associated with 206.18.146.144? The U.S. courts. So not only was A3G probably a federal government employee, as Howard Bashman noted, but she worked for the courts—possibly as a judge or secretary, but most likely as a law clerk.

I thought back to the preceding class of Stinson clerks—Janet Lee, Michael Nomellini, and their two co-clerks. Had any of them left Judge Stinson to go do second clerkships for different judges? Nope—they were all at private law firms now.

Then I thought about my co-clerks and whether one of them could be behind Beneath Their Robes. It definitely wasn't Loyola Larry; he couldn't pull off something like BTR. I also couldn't see it being James—he was too level-headed to revel in the kind of gossip seen on the site.

What about Amit? I had previously dismissed him as too much of a sycophant and too risk-averse. But I didn't know him that well—and I always suspected he was hiding a secret or two. He was the most high-strung among us; could that disposition have driven him to a reckless outlet for the stress of the clerkship?

I thought back to when the site started and how I first learned about it. It launched back in November, after the election—around the time that Judge Stinson become more difficult and Amit started to get frustrated with her, as he confessed to me over our Thai dinner. As for how I learned about the site, it was also from Amit, who mentioned it to the rest of us over one of our lunches in the library. He dropped in the men
tion casually, but as I replayed the scene in my head, I could absolutely imagine it as an effort to draw our attention to his handiwork.

It soon dawned on me: I didn't need to speculate. I actually had, in my work email account, emails from
[email protected]
. All I needed to do was open one up and compare the IP address to A3G's address.

My right hand trembled slightly as I guided the mouse through the motions. I found a random message from Amit, when he circulated to the rest of us a list of grammar tips (which I already knew), and opened it. Then I displayed the full original message to open up the headers.

206.18.146.144. Bang. AG, as in Amit Gupta, was A3G. How apropos.

And how advantageous to me. After pondering the matter for a few minutes, I developed my game plan, then exited my office to execute. Standing in the hallway, I surveyed the chambers to see who else might be around. Larry wasn't in (of course), nor was James (who would work on weekends but not until the afternoon, after his long run).

But Amit was in: his door was slightly ajar, his office lights were on, and I could hear typing coming from inside. Perfect. After picking up some pages from the office printer, I knocked on Amit's door and entered, without even waiting for him to answer. He hastily closed a browser window on his computer—clearly I had caught him off guard. Perhaps he had just seen the How Appealing post?

“Good morning, Amit. Reading anything interesting?”

I seated myself in one of his visitor chairs and made myself comfortable.

“Um, no, just came into chambers to do some work for the coming week, you know …”

“What else other than work might bring you into chambers on a Saturday?”

He seemed jumpy. I almost felt sorry for him—almost.

“Other than work? I don't know that many people here in town, so I probably spend more time here than I have to.”

“And not all of that time is spent on bench memos and opinions, is it?”

“Well, I surf the web and read the news online like everyone else …”

“And do you read … blogs?”

“Doesn't everyone? The judge expects us to be on top of the blogs.”

“But I don't think she expects us to be, well,
writing
one of the blogs.”

Amit cast his eyes downward and bit his lower lip. This was too easy.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Amit, I know you are Article III Groupie.”

He started laughing—and he was actually not half-bad. I would have to present my proof. I stood up, so that I could look down upon him sitting at his desk, and placed my printout in front of him.

“Take a look at these pages,” I said. “The first is an email message from you, Amit Gupta. The second is an email message from your alter ego, Article III Groupie. I've opened the headers to display the IP addresses on both messages, and I've circled each IP address. As you can see, they're identical—just as you and A3G are one and the same.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know this business about IP addresses.”

“Exactly—which is how you got busted. I'm guessing that right before I came in you were educating yourself about IP addresses, perhaps after reading the How Appealing post revealing that you work for the federal government. Maybe that's the browser window you closed right before I came in?”

He was speechless. Time to go in for the kill.

“What were you thinking?” I said. “You attacked our boss, a distinguished federal judge. You utilized your work computer for this, a gross misuse of government resources. You wrote about goings-on in chambers, a violation of your duties of loyalty and confidentiality as a law clerk.”

I towered over Amit in triumph. He buried his head in his forearms, which were resting on his desk blotter, and whimpered like a dog.

“I'm going to have to report this to Judge Stinson on Monday,” I continued. “That won't go over very well. I hear she sometimes fires law clerks—I think I read that on, oh yes, Beneath Their Robes. And in this
case, firing would be fully deserved.”

“What do you want?” he moaned, his voice muffled by his forearms and his possible sobs. “Tell me what you want. Just promise me you won't tell the judge.”

“My demands are quite modest. I have no desire to destroy your promising legal career, and I wish you great success when you return to New York to work at Sullivan & Cromwell. But yes, I do have some requests. First, I have to protect the judge. You need to shut the blog down immediately and never blog again.”

“Consider it done. I've learned my lesson.”

“Second, you need to withdraw all your pending applications for Supreme Court clerkships. And tell Judge Stinson you're no longer interested in clerking for the Court.”

Amit looked up. His eyes were red; he
had
been crying.

“No,” he said, with surprising firmness. “I won't do that. I can't do that. It's my dream to clerk for the Supreme Court.”

“It's my dream too. But your dream just turned into a nightmare. You should have thought more carefully about your future before you decided to start your stupid blog and trash our boss.”

“I didn't trash our boss! I was just blowing off steam. I've been so lonely out here, and it has been so stressful, and I've had no one to talk to about this. My friends are back on the East Coast. My parents don't understand anything about clerking—you can probably relate. The blogging was a kind of therapy for me. I didn't write about any of my cases or anything of substance. It was just harmless, silly gossip. Please, Audrey—don't make me withdraw. That's too much to ask.”

“I'm sorry, but I have to protect the justices. Given what you've done to Judge Stinson with Beneath Their Robes, how could you be trusted with the even greater responsibility of clerking for the Supreme Court? You would be a danger to the Court, a time bomb waiting to go off. This is for the good of the Court.”

“The only thing I've ever wanted as much was to win the National Spelling Bee—and I did that. I know I have a shot at getting a clerkship
with one of the justices.”

“I know you do too—which is why you need to bow out.”

“You're just doing this so
you
can secure Judge Stinson's recommendation to the justices. But you don't have to force me out like this. We can
both
get Supreme Court clerkships. There's no rule saying that only one clerk in a chambers can get a SCOTUS clerkship. Judge Polanski feeds almost all of his clerks to the Court, year after year.”

“Amit, don't play games with me. I'm not one of those pimply teenagers you used to spell circles around in your bees. You know as well as I do that Judge Stinson is no Judge Polanski. She has never had more than one of her clerks at the Supreme Court in a single term.”

Amit looked up at me pleadingly. I wasn't wearing heels, but I sure felt like I was, feeling tall and powerful as I loomed over Amit.

“There's a first time for everything?” he offered. “Judge Stinson is getting lots of positive buzz from being mentioned as a possible justice. There's a chance that this could be the year she sends more than one clerk to the Court.”

“I can't take that chance. I need to maximize my own odds of landing a SCOTUS clerkship—which means getting you out of the picture.”

Amit knew he was defeated, as if he had heard the dreaded ping that sounds when someone gets eliminated from a spelling bee.

“I can't believe this,” he said, shaking his head. “You're blackmailing me. This is completely unethical and wrong.”

“Not as unethical as what you did. I'm actually doing this for your own good. And for the good of the Court. Anyone who has the poor judgment to do what you did should not be allowed anywhere near the justices' chambers.”

“You're an evil bitch.”

“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. You will go in and talk to Judge Stinson on Monday morning, telling her that you're withdrawing all your Supreme Court clerkship applications. Then, in the afternoon, you will send her an email confirming the conversation. You will bcc me on that email. I want the proof that you followed through on our agreement.”

Amit nodded.

“I underestimated you,” he said. “I knew you were smart, but I never expected you to be this ruthless.”

“I'm just doing what needs to be done. To be a successful professional woman, you need to be a little monstrous.”