Supreme Ambitions (2 page)

“Great if you oppose the Ninth Circuit's efforts to bring justice and a progressive agenda to the western United States!”

I laughed. The Ninth Circuit was the nation's most left-leaning appeals court, known for issuing decisions that were embraced by the ACLU and NPR crowds (before getting overturned by the Supreme Court). And Polanski was one of a handful of conservative judges who could get in the liberals' way (unless he happened to side with them, which he did from time to time).

The waitress arrived with our dishes, placing them before us unceremoniously, and asked us if we needed anything else. We did not.

“So,” I asked Jeremy, as I added trace amounts of dressing to my salad, “those are all my interviews. Now tell me all about yours.”

“I have three interviews,” Jeremy said. “First up is James Kenote.”

“You applied to a
district
court judge?”

“I'm willing to make an exception for the first openly gay man appointed to the federal bench.”

In addition to serving as an articles editor, Jeremy was president of OutLaws and a cheerleader for all things gay.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Who else are you interviewing with?”

“Sheldon Gottlieb, in Pasadena.”

“Congrats! Your hero. The liberal lion of the nation's most far-left appeals court.”

We toasted again. Gottlieb was too old and too liberal to ever be nominated to the Supreme Court, so he did whatever the heck he wanted—and got away with it, thanks to lifetime tenure for federal judges. Jeremy idolized Sheldon Gottlieb for his outspokenness—on the bench and off, in opinions and in speeches—on behalf of various oppressed groups. But to many others, including myself, Gottlieb was a left-wing judicial activist who used the law to achieve goals he couldn't accomplish through the ballot box.

“And,” Jeremy said, “last but not least, Marta Solís Deleuze.”

“Ugh. You applied to her? I didn't know you were a masochist. I don't
know if all the stories are true, but if even half of them are …”

“Yeah, I know, some say Deleuze is a raging beeyatch,” said Jeremy. “But she's a champion for criminal defendants who have been railroaded, immigrants facing deportation, victims of police brutality. And she's a wise Latina, young enough and ethnic enough to someday get traction as a Supreme Court nominee. She's wicked smart—a former SCOTUS clerk herself, natch. I could learn a shitload from her. And she's in San Francisco, which would be a
fabulous
place to live for a year.”

“And she's starting to become a feeder judge, even though she's new to the Ninth.”

“True. But in terms of feeding, my best bet is probably Gottlieb.”

“Yeah. He's about at the level of Judge Stinson.”

Jeremy referred to judges so casually—“Gottlieb” or “Deleuze,” as opposed to “Judge Gottlieb” or “Judge Deleuze.” When you grow up as the son of the managing partner of Jenner & Block and a tenured professor at the University of Chicago Law School—Jeremy's mother, Judy Silverstein, was a leading tax law scholar—you're more likely to see federal judges as part of your family social circle, as opposed to gods and goddesses (which is how I viewed them).

I pushed my plate away, even though it still held about a third of my salad.

“That's all you're eating?” Jeremy asked.

“You know how I eat,” I said. “I have no desire to return to my childhood chubbiness. Being an overweight biracial girl with a disabled sister was no recipe for playground popularity. Anyway, I hope you get Gottlieb, and I get Stinson. It would be fun to clerk on the Ninth Circuit together.”

“It would! But we'd probably end up working against each other on a lot of cases. Since, you know, you'd be working for the forces of darkness.”

“The forces of darkness? Judge Stinson and her allies just want to interpret the law faithfully, to apply the law as written. It's not a matter of pushing an agenda, from the left or the right. It's about the text of the
Constitution, the statutes, and the precedents. The job of the judge is to apply the law to the facts.”

“Oh, Audrey, don't be so naïve. ‘The law' isn't some pure thing floating out there in the ether. What ends up being ‘the law' is affected by a million things other than the text. It's affected by how the case is argued by the lawyers. It's affected by how the judges interact with the lawyers, and with each other. And yes, like it or not, it's affected by the political beliefs and policy preferences of the judges. Hell, as the old saying goes, sometimes the law depends on what the judge had for breakfast.”

“I completely disagree. There
is
such a thing as ‘the law,' and it's not just based on the political preferences of the judges. And anyway, if anyone is working for the forces of darkness, it's your side. I can imagine you and Judge Gottlieb trying to do something crazy, like flinging open the doors to the California prisons to let those poor misunderstood criminals roam the streets. And when you do, Judge Stinson and I will do our best to stop you.”

“Two liberal Jewish guys versus two conservative Asian girls,” said Jeremy. “Is that a fair fight? I think you judicial divas would kick our pale white-boy asses.”

“You make us sound like a pair of right-wing dragon ladies! We're moderates. I'm a ‘conservative' only here at crazy-liberal Yale, and she's a ‘conservative' only on the crazy-liberal Ninth Circuit. Our views are probably where the average American's are. And, not to be too technical, we're each half-Asian.”

I flashed my best million-dollar smile at him. I have my physical flaws, but my teeth are gorgeous. And sharp.

I ended up with a window seat on my flight out to Los Angeles. Since I had booked on short notice, I wound up near the back of the plane, close enough to smell the lavatories' mix of cleanser and other substances. But at least I wasn't in a middle seat; in fact, the middle seat next to me was empty, a rare thing these days. The relative comfort allowed me to concentrate for most of the flight, reading printouts of newspaper articles about Judge Stinson, her most noteworthy opinions, and the generally glowing clerkship reviews from the Yale career services office written by former Stinson clerks. Sample line: “The worst part about clerking on the Ninth Circuit and for Judge Stinson is that I probably won't have a job that's this interesting, and a boss who's this awesome, until much later in my legal career—if ever.”

After landing at LAX, I stopped at a Starbucks in the terminal for a tall coffee—inside a grande cup, so I could fill up the empty space with milk—and a (low-fat) blueberry muffin, which I deemed unlikely to give me stomach trouble before an interview. I had learned, from past experience, not to interview on an empty stomach. During my senior year of college, while I was being interviewed for the Rhodes Scholarship, my stomach growled—loudly—and I didn't get the fellowship.

To this day I blame my audible stomach rumblings for changing the course of my life. Had I gotten the Rhodes, everything would have been different. Have you ever had an experience where, had things turned out just a little bit differently, your entire life would have been transformed?
The time a talent scout was supposed to visit your college athletic practice, but canceled at the last minute? The time you almost got asked out by a celebrity? The time you came in second place at a prestigious musical performance competition? For me, that time was my failed Rhodes interview. Like a Supreme Court clerkship, a Rhodes Scholarship gets mentioned in your obituary.

After polishing off the coffee and muffin, I made my way to the terminal exit. I stepped outside, into brilliant sunshine and a perfect temperature in the low seventies, and headed for the taxi line. Unlike New York cabs, which are all yellow and made in a limited number of styles, cabs in Los Angeles lack uniformity of appearance; they instead come in an unregulated jumble of colors and styles. Welcome to the jungle.

I wound up in a patriotic minivan: red, white, and blue. The driver was thin, cheerful, dark-skinned, and of indeterminate age. His driver identification card said his name was Pervez Hamadani; I guessed he was Pakistani.

I thought about how an immigrant cab driver was about to drive me to my clerkship interview with a federal judge who was herself the daughter of an immigrant cab driver. As my airplane reading had reminded me, Christina Stinson (née Wong) was the daughter of a taxi driver who came to the United States from Shanghai and an American-born nursing assistant. The future judge grew up in modest circumstances, in a working-class neighborhood in the Inland Empire.

I was struck by the similarities in our backgrounds. We were both biracial women. We both grew up without much money. We both had mothers who were nurses' aides. After doing well in college (Stinson graduated summa cum laude from UCLA), we both went straight through to law school (in her case, Boalt Hall, aka UC Berkeley).

The driver, Pervez, made eye contact with me using his rearview mirror and asked me my destination. I told him the address, feeling self-conscious as I said it due to its regal ring: 125 South Grand Avenue, Pasadena.

“What is that?” he asked, as he entered the address into a GPS device.
Again, a difference between Los Angeles and New York cabbies: the latter wouldn't be caught dead using GPS (even though, truth be told, some of them could use it, especially in the West Village).

“A federal courthouse,” I said. “The Ninth Circuit courthouse.”

“In Pasadena? Isn't the courthouse downtown?”

“That's the district—er, the trial—court. I'm going to the appeals court.”

“What's the difference?” he asked, pulling away from the curb. I wondered whether he was trying to be polite or was genuinely interested.

“The trial court is where most of the action is—where trials are held, where criminals get sentenced—that sort of thing.”

“Ah, like O.J. Simpson!” The driver's face brightened with recognition. “My first year in the United States! The white Ford Bronco!”

“Yes, like O.J.,” I said, “except that was state court, and I'm going to federal court.”

“What's the difference?”

I felt like a law professor teaching a 1L civil procedure class. Was this fellow preparing for his citizenship test?

“State versus federal depends on the law involved,” I said. “Some areas of law are mostly state law, like family law and divorces and that sort of thing. And some areas of law are mostly federal—like immigration, say.”

Mentioning immigration seemed to dampen Pervez's enthusiasm for legal discussion. He turned the radio on to NPR. I looked out the window at the passing neighborhoods of Los Angeles, which reminded me of the cab queue at the airport, chaotic and clashing. The city seemed squalid and seedy. At least L.A.'s infamous traffic wasn't bad: there was plenty of volume, but we moved at a decent clip. I was surprised at the hilly, wooded terrain; I always thought of Los Angeles as sprawling, flat, and denuded.

As we passed through a series of tunnels fringed with lush vegetation, Pervez lowered the volume on the radio and made eye contact with me through the rearview mirror.

“Young lady, where are you from?”

When my Asian-looking mother got asked this question, it was a national-origin inquiry; for me, it was a simpler query.

“New York.”

“And you are going to a trial in a court?”

There was something courtly in his demeanor. I decided I liked Pervez.

“Oh no, I'm going to the appeals court,” I said. “The court that reviews what the trial court did to make sure it's okay.”

“So you're a lawyer?”

“Not yet …”

Pervez turned around and grinned.

“You are too young—and too pretty!—to be a lawyer.”

I laughed. His grin was sweet, not lecherous.

“Thank you,” I said, “but I hope to be a lawyer someday. Right now I'm in my last year of law school. I'm here to interview for a job as a law clerk.”

“You came all the way from New York for a clerical job?”

I was about to laugh again but stopped myself. I didn't know much about clerkships until I started law school. And misconceptions about a law clerk's role—from Pervez, from my mother—were a healthy and humbling reminder that clerks play a behind-the-scenes role in the justice system.

“Actually, law clerks don't do much clerical work,” I explained. “They assist judges in deciding cases—helping the judges prepare for court, and researching and drafting opinions.”

“Sounds important! I bet it pays well.”

“Not particularly. But it's great experience, it looks good on a résumé, and you can get a high-paying job at a law firm afterwards.”

“And where do these cases come from? All over?”

I was starting to feel like a Wikipedia entry. I rattled off some facts about the Ninth Circuit: the largest federal appeals court, jurisdiction over cases coming from nine western states, about 30 active judges, headquarters in San Francisco.

“You are a very knowledgeable young lady! Good luck in your interview.”

We exited the highway and turned onto a broad boulevard lined with orange trees. It was a stately street, with large and tasteful homes on either side, all bathed in a golden light. It reminded me of exclusive neighborhoods back east. As my mother rode the 7 train back to Woodside, the doctors she worked for would drive their Mercedeses and BMWs back to towns like this, in Westchester or Fairfield or Bergen County.

Pervez noticed me craning my neck to take in the scenery.

“This is one of the nicest parts of the city,” he said. “We're almost there. If you get the job, you'll see this every day.”

We turned left on to a shadeful side street, then quickly turned right. Seemingly out of nowhere, a pink palace materialized. Standing about six stories tall, with a bell tower, it loomed over the low-slung residential neighborhood. Said the female voice on the GPS: “You have reached your destination.”

“This is it?” Pervez asked. “Are you sure this is a courthouse? It looks like a hotel.”

“Actually, it used to be a hotel,” I said, as the research I had done about the building came back to me. “It started off as a resort called the Hotel Vista del Arroyo. During World War II, it was used as an army hospital. After the war, it fell into disrepair, until it got converted into a courthouse.”

Pervez pulled the car up a bit, and we saw a large rectangular sign on the lawn, in a shade of pink that perfectly matched the stucco of the building: “Richard H. Chambers United States Court of Appeals Building—125 South Grand Avenue.”

The taxi fare came to a little under $80 on the meter. I gave Pervez five crisp $20 bills, hoping that tipping generously would bring me good luck for the interview—the superstitious Filipino in me.

“If you ever need a taxi, call me,” he said, handing me his card. “This is L.A., you can't just walk out into the street and wave for a cab.”

I got out, my briefcase-like purse slung over my shoulder, and looked
up at the building. The courthouses I was familiar with were grim concrete affairs, coldly beautiful neoclassical structures, or sleek and sterile towers of stone and glass. They embodied the power and greatness of government, but at the cost of aesthetic appeal or architectural originality. The Richard H. Chambers Courthouse in Pasadena looked nothing like these other courthouses; it was splendid and welcoming, in large and equal measure. I could understand why one amateur photographer, who had taken pictures of the courthouse and posted them online, dubbed it “the most beautiful courthouse in America,” adding that “law clerks who work elsewhere should feel cheated.”

The courthouse was set back a good distance from the street. I walked through an arbor, lined with gently weathered wooden benches and flowering white rosebushes, and reached two ornately carved wooden doors, each with three diamond-shaped, leaded-glass panes. Through one of the panes, I could vaguely make out a high-ceilinged, light-filled foyer—an entrance hall that could have belonged to one of the million-dollar homes down the street.

I pulled open one of the (surprisingly heavy) doors. No automatic glass doors here. This was no ordinary courthouse.

Three courthouse security officers lounged in chairs next to a metal detector, looking profoundly bored. This was an ordinary courthouse after all.

The guard closest to the entrance, a stout, bald man, rose out of his chair.

“How can we help you, young lady?” His tone sounded slightly patronizing, as if I had wandered into the wrong building and he would soon have to give me directions.

“I'm here for an interview with Judge Stinson.”

The bald guard nodded and asked me for a photo ID. I handed him my passport—like many New York City kids, I had never acquired a driver's license—and he wrote my name down in a ledger. His two colleagues stood up and exchanged strange glances.

“Into the lioness's den,” said a tall guard with short gray hair, as he
took my bag and placed it on the conveyor belt for the x-ray machine.

The lioness's den? Would Judge Stinson be a tough interviewer? Many interviews for legal jobs consist of a schmoozy, conversational rundown of the candidate's résumé. As a “learned profession,” law likes to think of itself as more genteel than, say, a ruthlessly data-driven enterprise like management consulting, with its “case study” interviews that amount to hazing with math. But every now and then you get grilled. I willed the blueberry muffin to remain still in my stomach.

I passed through the metal detector without setting it off, thanks to my decision to refrain from jewelry (except for two small faux-pearl earrings), and collected my purse from the x-ray machine. The bald guard pointed out the elevator to me and directed me to the fifth floor.

The courthouse elevator had just a single door, made of wood and carved in the same elaborate manner as the two front doors. The narrowness of the doorway unnerved me. I sometimes find signs in random everyday phenomena, a habit acquired from my mother, and I took the narrowness of the elevator as a commentary on the narrowness of my chances of landing the job. I opted for the stairs. As I ascended the wide and inviting staircase, with a wrought iron banister and colorful Mission-style tiles between each step, I congratulated myself for picking kitten-heel pumps; they had enough of a heel to be femininely elegant, but were perfectly comfortable for climbing stairs.

Upon reaching the fifth floor, I had no trouble locating the chambers. A handsome brass nameplate read: “Chambers of the HON. CHRISTINA WONG STINSON.” I pressed a buzzer, as softly and politely as I could—I hate loud and obnoxious buzzers—and opened the door after being buzzed through.

The elegance of the courthouse's public spaces prepared me for something nice, but not for Judge Stinson's jewel box of a chambers. The waiting room, decorated in harmonized shades of beige, yellow, and gold, could be described as modern French provincial meets California country. It looked straight out of a coffee-table book of Napa Valley estates, not like any space owned by the federal government. I certainly hoped
the American taxpayer hadn't paid for the hardwood floors, a sharp departure from the wall-to-wall nylon carpet commonly seen in government offices, or the vase full of fresh-cut orchids, sitting on a low table of pale wood.

At the far end of the room, in front of two high windows that admitted copious amounts of sunshine, stood a secretary's station, with cabinets and desk space built into the corner. It was standard-issue in design, except it was made of the same ivory-colored wood as the coffee table. I then realized: this was all custom work, including the coffee table.