Ho, Ho, Ho-Cast

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

Hello and welcome to another edition of Thinking Like A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice.

Kathryn Rubino:

Hi, Joe Patrice.

Joe Patrice:

That’s Kathryn Rubino. Awesome. And we are editors at Above the Law, and we do this show every week to talk about some of the big stories of the week. That was, as we conclude, for the busy scheduled folks who don’t have time to necessarily read everything. We sum up the important stuff. But first,

Kathryn Rubino:

Hey, listen, this is a….

Joe Patrice:

Oh, I’m sorry.

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay. Small talk. I get it right here. What I was going to say is actually a good lead in to small talk. If you had just given me a second, you might’ve had the transition, but it’s a very busy week for a lot of people. It’s holiday season. It’s our last show of 2024, if I’m calendaring correctly. And yeah, the holiday season is upon us. Yeah. Yay. I am very, very busy making Christmas magic.

Joe Patrice:

Oh yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

This is a big chunk of my time that I’m not currently making magic. So You’re welcome.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, I’ve been on a real bender of cookie production.

Kathryn Rubino:

Ooh, I love that. Yeah, listen, you got to make the magic happen. You got to put up all the Christmas trees. You got to do Christmas camp. That’s what my family calls it, because my family that comes from out of town. So it’s not just like Christmas dinner, it’s like a week of Christmas fun. So Christmas camp, we got to do games. We have to do crafts. It’s literally camp, but we’ll do like a candy cane Easter egg hunt, but with candy canes.

That’s not fun? Candy Cane. Well, yeah, but I feel like if you just said candy cane, that’s not very explanatory what it is.

Joe Patrice:

It strikes me as though that’s very explanatory. I think that’s literally what it is. A candy can, I don’t know, as though they could get any more difficult.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, that is what you do, but it has

Joe Patrice:

As a strict textualist, I feel like that’s,

Kathryn Rubino:

Oh, now we’re defending textualism. Good to know.

Chris Williams:

Well, as a strict textualist, they’d be blood of Christ canes because you got to add the Jesus in there.

Joe Patrice:

That’s an originalist.

Chris Williams:

What’s the difference?

Joe Patrice:

The words don’t need to bear out what the originalists think and there’s nothing about, yeah, so,

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay. Okay. Anyway, my point is I always fun, Joe. I’m in it. How about, are you up to these days, Chris, that it’s not work related?

Chris Williams:

Oh no. I have no problems with this caveat. I’m good. For example, this weekend I caught up on a lot of sleep, went to a sky zone area of Sky Zone.

Kathryn Rubino:

Is that where you tried to fly?

Chris Williams:

No, it’s where you try to jump on trampolines and not hit children.

Kathryn Rubino:

I did one of those where bachelorette party

Chris Williams:

Once that was, which was also known as Matt Gaetz’s house. But that’s a difference. It was not there. It was not there. I did not have those connections, nor would I like them. But it was cool. It was nice. It was overpriced pizza, but it was a friend’s birthday party,

Joe Patrice:

Trampolines, or as I like to call them, everybody’s favorite waiver issue. Spotter.

Chris Williams:

Yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

For real.

Chris Williams:

These

Yo, I swear to God. So talk about lawyer brain, but still small talk. So I’m walking and I feel like a little bit of pain in my left ankle and I go up, I see the weight limit, I look at the waiver that I sign, and it’s like 14 different things. It’s like, you will not sue us if you are injured. You will tell us before you leave, any arbitration will happen, blah, blah, blah. We need your social security number and blood type. It was so much. It was so much. And I was like, I’m going to sign this, but I don’t need the jump. In fact that just stand outside.

Kathryn Rubino:

I’m just going to look at the building. And I think that’s dangerous enough.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. Yeah. It was like, oh, it felt like going to Disney World. I don’t even know what else Outside. Disney

Kathryn Rubino:

World is significantly less dangerous, by the way.

Chris Williams:

I know I was done both. I was making a Disney Disney Plus waiver joke.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, that’s what he’s doing.

Chris Williams:

So sorry.

Joe Patrice:

I got it. I was like, I know where he’s going with

Chris Williams:

This.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, so how’s that going? We done with this?

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I guess. I mean,

Joe Patrice:

Oh, there we go.

Kathryn Rubino:

Your discontent over the whole small talk segment that I am pretty sure you brought to the table is really a thing. Maybe that should be your New Year’s resolution for 2025, since this is in fact the last show of the year, maybe next year. You bring a little less attitude to finding out something that is not just work related from us.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, okay.

Chris Williams:

Are you suggesting joy or being a joy to be around

Joe Patrice:

In the evolution? Just a human. What more joy can you possibly get than talking about the law every week with all of our friends?

Chris Williams:

Wow. Anyw who?

Joe Patrice:

So yeah. So hey, let us talk about some hoes. This is

Kathryn Rubino:

Hoes in all the area codes.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, no, we’re not talking about

Chris Williams:

Mostly New York, pa.

Joe Patrice:

Let’s talk. So Hogan levels, which is affectionately known as ho love, though they don’t tend to embrace that. As

Kathryn Rubino:

Much as I have heard that some of the partnership

Joe Patrice:

Especially known by us

Kathryn Rubino:

Is not, which is really a shame because it’s really sticky in your brain. And I don’t think necessarily think that big law partners managing partners, the management committees generally speaking, understand or remember how hard it is for people who are not indoctrinated in this world already as a one L may not yet be to get ahold of all the names of firms and all the things and whatever. And if there’s a reason why Morrison Foster goes by mofo,

Joe Patrice:

Well, that’s the one that I was going to point out. There is a big law firm that has absolutely leaned into the fact that they’re a bunch of mofos. They use that as their marketing plos

Kathryn Rubino:

Fantastic and whole Love is another super easy one to remember that you would think helps people who might be interviewing for big law jobs, remember X firm and the differences between this firm versus that firm. But

Joe Patrice:

Be

Chris Williams:

That site in

Joe Patrice:

Nevada.

Chris Williams:

No,

Kathryn Rubino:

Be that as it may. That’s the

Chris Williams:

Move you need to have some whole love in Nevada. There’s a lot of litigation going on.

Kathryn Rubino:

Hogan levels announced bonuses recently and they matched the year end bonuses.

Joe Patrice:

Full stop. That’s good. The news.

Kathryn Rubino:

See how I didn’t continue that with sentence with and the special bonuses that

Joe Patrice:

Are going around. Oh, that’s I going to

Kathryn Rubino:

Miss. So those, that extra pot of money between six and $25,000 depending on seniority, was not given out to the whole Love associates a bad day to be a whole lover.

Chris Williams:

Oh, because you’d have less money to spend.

Kathryn Rubino:

The firm is aware that all the associates are super angry about this as

Joe Patrice:

Well. Well, that’s good to know. They’re at least aware.

Kathryn Rubino:

They’re at least aware. So good news on that front. We have definitely heard

Chris Williams:

From, wait, are you saying hoes mad?

Kathryn Rubino:

That was what I was saying. That is you’re not wrong. So folks are mad. They’re getting less money than their peers at other firms. And listen, Hogan Levels is a very big firm. They’re number 11 based on last year’s financials, just in terms of the gross revenue that they took in. We’re not talking about a firm that this firm, by all appearances should have the cash to give it out to associates.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I mean, this is a over 2 billion firm. This is not just, it’s like 11 as you say in the AM law, but this is a global 14 firm with its roots overseas.

Is very much in a position to give out that money. And it is a little weird that they have decided not to.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I mean, did they not think that we were going to write the scathing story? Did you not think that associates were going to be mad? Did you not think that this would be, you could have just given out the money and no one would think twice about it. Now all of a sudden you are the story

Joe Patrice:

And it’s a little weird. I do think of Hogan levels generally as more media savvy than other firms,

Which just adds to the confusion here because is a firm that does, I personally think do a really good job of understanding what the press is after keeping us informed and so on. But this is just kind of a weird whiff on what it looks like. And I think there’s some chatter that they give out some discretionary bonuses and that their position is, well, we don’t need to give the special bonus. You’ll be getting that in. People will more or less make that up in discussionary bonuses, which sure, but if you do that, you cannot allow a lapse between your announcement and people getting those bonuses. We have some other firms that we’ve reported on who are like, they don’t give out things under this, but they confirmed that 85% of their associates got higher than the special. Something like that. You put that out to make sure that you don’t end up in this situation.

Kathryn Rubino:

And it’s interesting because the communication aspect of it is something that the firm has specifically apologized for, that we actually had a follow-up story to this story where the firm kind of recognized that people were angry, apologized for the way that it was communicated. But I mean, listen, as a tipster said, it’s not so much the communication as the amount of money that is the real sticking point here. And they are going to hold a meeting in January with associates, a town hall to go over the financials, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But again, it just feels very unforced.

Joe Patrice:

You really as a firm have to take these things into account because they live on, and that is the value of Above the Law, but also the rest of the legal media too. But more us, this stuff lives on. And when you don’t do this and when you make an unforced error like that, that sticks in somebody’s head when they’re making a decision. They look it up on Above the Law like, well, what’s happened with this firm? And they find out this firm may not pay them what the market does at some point. And that’s going to factor into decision. And so it’s really, really a poor decision just to not have some messaging that this is going to turn out and over such a little bit of money.

Chris Williams:

I feel like on some level, the firm is, the firm is setting himself up to failure because the only message that would really fix this at whatever medium they’re going to have is, oh, here’s the bonus money. Anything else will be read as an excuse because then the next PR thing is going to be like, Hey, record profits. You’re making all this money. Share a little bit. And like I said, it really isn’t that much. It really isn’t that much.

Joe Patrice:

And over the last couple of years we did, especially during the Covid situation, we did see a lot of different firms make mistakes like that begin a town hall with we are just making handover fist money. We have the highest numbers ever. The partners are doing great at any way. We’re not paying you, which this is not that tone deaf, but this is not a winning moment.

Chris Williams:

Speaking of overwhelming profits and people being screwed, is there a Luigi story?

Joe Patrice:

Okay. No. Oh yeah. Well, I was going to go to a break, but we will go to that when

Kathryn Rubino:

All we back break and then we’ll talk about people getting screwed.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, excellent point, Chris, while we continue our conversation about people getting screwed over, we have a Luigi story, which we are going to force into the HO model because as you will see, this show is going to be ho, ho,

Kathryn Rubino:

Ho, ho, ho.

Joe Patrice:

So we finished Hoing levels. Now we are going to talk about Luigi’s criminal case, and it’d be about screwed over

Chris Williams:

One small tangential ho tie in. He’s still getting lusted over online. It is insane. It’s like, who’s the guy that I think a guy killed JFK so that Jody Foster would like him.

Joe Patrice:

No, Hinckley tried to kill Reagan.

Chris Williams:

Hinckley tried to kill Reagan. It is like if a guy was wanting kill this guy, so people like me, and it worked. This is massively popular. But anyway, that’s the,

Joe Patrice:

Although Jody Foster had a recent interview, I think she

Chris Williams:

Felt them a little bit. Yeah,

Joe Patrice:

She was like, I got to admit, I was a little impressed. So anyway, though. Yeah, no. Well, this goes to your story, not even my story. So we’ll talk about yours first and then segue. You wrote a piece about this case and how it seems as though there is nothing but missteps on the part of every law enforcement individual to try basically to make this guy seem cooler at every turn.

Chris Williams:

Not to mention also make them look like Dicks in the scientific term. There’s one photo where what, I guess what the I’m a cop PR thing is we’re going to have a photo of this guy where he looks mean, but the photo is, it’s a cop gripping the back of this guy’s neck. And why would you do that to someone with known back injuries? And then when they did the Purple Walk where he looked like Superman, right behind his shoulder was Eric Adams. He’s a great ethical figure to have behind a person that’s being treated like a public hero. Why would you do that?

Joe Patrice:

At no point, it’s almost as though nobody sat down and thought about, I saw one social media post was like, so did you make an example of Luigi with a perp walk and response? Sure did. Boss made him look real sexy, just like you said, wait, what? Really poor decision making on their part, which is going to lead into this story, which my story actually dealt with another point that I actually read about in 4 0 4 media. Oh wait. But yeah,

Chris Williams:

Before this story, but may lead into what you’re saying. Have you seen the merch? Well, yes.

Joe Patrice:

Well, that is exactly where we go.

Chris Williams:

Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

So there’s tons of people putting out, in particular independent artists, putting out their images like drawings of Luigi and with hearts around them and stuff like that, which people are posting on various, not his

Chris Williams:

Hearts. There are Saint Luigi candles, right?

Joe Patrice:

They’re

Chris Williams:

Posting all of us getting deified with how they’ve been treating

Joe Patrice:

Him. So this then prompts, apparently, obviously DMCA notices aren’t things that we have a ton of information about, but there is a repository of those notices when they’re filed and someone purporting to be acting on part of UnitedHealthcare is filing DMCA takedown notices of all of this merchandise and saying, which for those who don’t know how the DMCA works, basically the law says that if a provider like Etsy or somebody like that is, or T public in this instance has a product that the copyright owner believes violates their copyright, they can’t go after the big T-shirt place right away. They file this notice saying, Hey, this is on your site, and then this website has an opportunity to take it off the site. That’s kind of a safe harbor. A lot of times people, companies just yank it rather than worry about it.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, because that’s the nature of the safe harbor provision. If you’re not going to employ the kind of legal department that’s going to evaluate each and every claim, it is certainly a more prudent legal move to just pull the merchandise.

Joe Patrice:

Sure. And this speaks to fundamental problems with the DMCA as structured, which has been used to stifle lots of fair use instances, which is not good. But before we even get to any of that, why does UnitedHealthcare think they own this guy’s image?

Kathryn Rubino:

Sure. I mean, the word bad faith has come up quite a few times.

Joe Patrice:

Now. We don’t know that this is somebody working for UnitedHealthcare, they purport to be, but if it is them, and I really hope that the law department UnitedHealthcare is smarter than this, but if they’re going around filing DMCA notices, trying to pretend that they own this guy’s image, now that he has allegedly taken a shot at their CEO is a wild stretch. And as you said, bad faith.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, I think that it also, maybe this relates to the DMCA proper, but fundamentally, if these notices are effective, you’re looking at people who are fundamentally litigation shy. If you are targeting these T Public or Zazzle or whatever it is, they are just dealing in volume. They’re not particularly, don’t have a motivation to go through each and every claim. They just pull the stuff as they get the notices and it’s done. They don’t want the litigation. So even if you don’t actually have the claim to the image, who’s going to know? I think that is the fundamental problem,

Joe Patrice:

Right? It is technically illegal. Oh, they also to file A-D-M-C-A notice if you aren’t the good faith owner of it. Sure. But as you said, who’s going to get it? They also attempted to own the words deny, defend, depose in pieces of art. Which one? I think if you’re UnitedHealthcare, if I were advising them, I think you would try as much as possible to claim that you don’t own those words. Probably you should distance yourself from them as much as possible. But even in that case, that case is slightly better because the instance where the take down notice was sent, somebody had used elements of the UnitedHealthcare three Blue line logo to make the D’S in it. And so they were arguing that this was a trademark issue. But even at that, this was entirely within the realm of protected pair.

Kathryn Rubino:

Fair use. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So really problematic. Really troubling for how our intellectual

Chris Williams:

Property, right, works works.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Chris Williams:

Completely. Not legal related, but just a thought. Have y’all seen Zoolander? Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Yes.

Chris Williams:

Doesn’t this feel like Zoolander, like some random model hot person gets activated and then how hits and has a blue steel? There’s going to continue to be things like this, or people continue to monetize this image. So at some point there’s going to hit a point where people, I mean they tend to be litigation averse, but the money to be made here is so much that they might decide to lean in and call the bluff on the Well,

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean, I see. I don’t know that they will call the bluff, but there are so many artists, and that’s kind of the nature of these business models, that it doesn’t matter if we pull down Joe Smith’s fre use image y, then somebody else, Joe Smith too, will upload an account and have a slight variation on that image or that kind of thing.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, very interesting. So yeah, let’s take a break here and we’ll get to a new story on the other side. Alright, we’re back and let’s round out our ho, ho ho

Kathryn Rubino:

With James Ho News.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, right. See how we did that? Thanks everybody for working with, I mean, we had two hoes pretty easily. We had to do a little bit of work to get that third one, but Chris came up with something in the last second there. We did promise to do it live. And so he pulled that one out. So we have ho sometimes

Kathryn Rubino:

When you procrastinate it just works out for

Joe Patrice:

You. It does. Alright. So James Ho, what’s up?

Kathryn Rubino:

Accounts? Yeah, so James Ho, back in the news Fifth Circuit judge, we’ve written variations on the story a bunch of times, which is that he says something that’s kind of very far right and outlandish. And we say it’s in an effort to get the attention of Donald Trump and or Leonard Leo in order to get him on the Supreme Court shortlist. Should a vacancy open up in Trump’s second term and it’s happening again, you guys.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, well there you go.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. This time it’s about birthright citizenship.

Joe Patrice:

So now this is an interesting one. So birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, this isn’t even a questionable one. It is absolutely explicitly included in the text of the 14th Amendment. So much so that there was a guy, a legal scholar who’s now a federal judge, wrote a big piece on how

Kathryn Rubino:

In 2006, I think this was,

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, how obviously the birthright citizenship is enshrined to the constitution and cannot be questioned. What was that judge’s

Kathryn Rubino:

Name? James Ho,

Joe Patrice:

Right? James. So now what’s James Ho thinking?

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I mean listen times, they are a changing Listen. Now that this has become Donald Trump’s latest hobby horse, James Ho is fully on board with getting rid of birthright citizenship.

Joe Patrice:

I don’t know if it’s fully on board, but he is saying he’s making statements to suggest that he no longer is. Sure.

Kathryn Rubino:

So this all goes back to Greg Abbott calling migrants and invading army and invasion on the state’s borders. And Donald Trump has sort of adopted that vernacular when talking about immigrants and migrants. And so do ho is saying, no one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenships. And I can’t imagine the legal argument for what that would be.

Joe Patrice:

Right. So yes. So this all comes out of the idea that if you try to recast what’s happening as though it is a state-based invasion, then that would cover it. But this, it isn’t,

Chris Williams:

Here’s the thing I don’t get, if you’re going to go that goofy with the constitutional argument, why not bring in the third amendment?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, where are third

Chris Williams:

Amendment, if you’re really trying to frame them as some invading army be like, and we have no obligation to house them. Why are they just go full throttle dump? Don’t dabble in the stupidity,

Joe Patrice:

Man. Somebody is definitely doing that though. Okay.

Chris Williams:

Dialogue on right now is taking notes like, Ooh, that’s a good point.

Joe Patrice:

If they aren’t, then a curse on you for putting that evil in the world. Because now they’ll, once they hear this, they will,

Chris Williams:

The show’s called Thinking Like A Lawyer, not an ethical person. Give a slack

Joe Patrice:

That’s all about could a not should I?

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, yeah. And listen these arguments about whether or not this will actually get Donald Trump’s attention, whether this puts James Ho on the short list is Well, I mean there isn’t even a list yet, right? There’s no current vacancy on the Supreme Court.

Joe Patrice:

Right. But I mean

Kathryn Rubino:

He was on the last short list.

Joe Patrice:

And personally I’ve made the argument that he is in continuing this trend that we’ve seen over the last couple decades of trying to get people who clerked for somebody to replace them. Kavanaugh Jackson, technically, I guess Roberts, Roberts replaced, even though

Kathryn Rubino:

He

Joe Patrice:

Theoretically wasn’t taking that seat. But things happened,

Kathryn Rubino:

He wound up

Joe Patrice:

So under that, I think there’s an argument to be had that ho is being held for Thomas’s seat. But

Kathryn Rubino:

If Alito retires first and listen,

Joe Patrice:

And I think that goes to Oldham then because I think they’re going to try to make the Alito clerk take

Kathryn Rubino:

That one. Listen. We’ll see. But that’s actually a good question. Whose seat do you think is the next to open up?

Chris Williams:

Well, I think one thing we got to factor in is not like what most people think is most likely to happen, but that we are in the bad place. The worst thing is going to happen. It’s going to be like, I don’t know.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, let’s assume

Chris Williams:

KKBJ.

Kathryn Rubino:

Let’s assume the worst isn’t happening. I think the act of debate, is it Alito or a Thomas? It

Joe Patrice:

Comes down to the severance package. How much of a blank check is some institution willing to give? Because Thomas has been fairly upfront in that letter back in the day where he is like, I don’t know. I mean, I might have to retire if I don’t start getting some more stuff. If as law or Liberty or somebody decides to

Kathryn Rubino:

Back the truck up for him,

Joe Patrice:

Back the truck up, you get to be the dean of the law school and do whatever you want with all of our money forever. Maybe he goes, but I don’t

Chris Williams:

Know. In that case, it seems

Joe Patrice:

Mean I can. Yeah, exactly. That’s what I was kind

Chris Williams:

Say because what was it? Not the Daily Show, it was John Oliver. He offered him like a million dollars a year in a fancy RV if he just retired and he didn’t take it.

Joe Patrice:

Thomas. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I mean I think that also Alito is exhausted by his role on the court. Even there’s some cracks that we’ve seen between him even and the rest of the right-wing justices on the court. I think Martha Ann, his wife, is very angry from the hidden recordings that we got at the end of the middle of last year. I think that she is very much looking forward to just retiring on LBI and flying whatever ridiculous flag she wants to for the rest of her

Joe Patrice:

Life. I think there was a really good article a few years ago, and I can’t remember who it was. I think it might’ve been Market Slate, I can’t remember. Anyway, really good article. They’ve gotten everything they want. They won. They’ve succeeded in every,

Kathryn Rubino:

Everybody’s lost Lebowski,

Joe Patrice:

Any dream scenario. And they’re angry. Alito and Thomas have seemed to get more and more angry. The more and more successful they’ve been. And the pitch to this, which I think is probably good analysis, is they have sat back and watched what they thought were abuses of the court be applauded, and they came in and said, we’re going to fix everything. And found that all it’s done is ruin the institution. Nobody believes it anymore. We’re like their poll was released. People talk about our court system on the same breath as Myanmar. Never a list you want to be on. And so with, I think they’re angry. They don’t understand why they’re hated doing the things they are. And I think that has caused some retrenchment. And there is an argument that they don’t want to go as unhappy and an unpleasant situation as it is. They think they can outlive it. They refuse to leave until they are treated as liberators.

Kathryn Rubino:

And maybe that’s true, but I also think this maybe gives more weight to your handing the torch off to their clerk, someone that they literally molded in the ways of the court. I think that probably lends to that theory. And you have to also remember, there’s a real fear of becoming the conservative or BG, right? Like staying too long, getting your seat replaced by the actual antithesis of what you believe in. And that’s always a risk in the system. You don’t that

Chris Williams:

Really though I feel like the country’s are moving rightward. I’m assuming the fear would come in after the Trump presidency. You think we’re going to get

Kathryn Rubino:

Correct. I’m saying if they don’t retire the same way, RBG did not retire during Obama’s second term. If they don’t retire during Trump’s second term, their worst nightmare could be president next. Right. RBGs worst nightmare was Trump as president and he got to fill her seat.

Chris Williams:

What I’m saying is do you think there would be a left-leaning equivalent of what Trump was after Trump’s presidency? I think there’s no way we would swing that much left to where that person coming in would be a threat. It doesn’t, the

Joe Patrice:

Judiciary. Oh, it doesn’t have to be a threat. No. So long as it’s not a Republican. If Thomas holds out for four more years and the winner is whoever it is, the replacement is going to be some Democrat. Right?

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. And listen, at the start of Obama’s second term, we never thought that Donald Trump was going to be the next president. Right. So I’m not trying to figure out what’s

Joe Patrice:

Going to happen. That was the whole whole RBG problem.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. She thought that a woman would be able to fill her seat.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well, and that didn’t work out.

Chris Williams:

My thinking on it was the last Democrat president was one that’s like, we need to build the wall and also have the last Democrat president been so rightward

Joe Patrice:

And put Jackson on the court. Right. That’s the thing. It doesn’t matter how right-leaning they may be on some individual policy, they’re going to replace Thomas with somebody like Jackson.

Chris Williams:

Well, that’s Biden. But yes, I hear what you’re saying.

Joe Patrice:

Right. Well, Biden is the last Democratic president. Right.

Chris Williams:

Think I was thinking about Kamala, but yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Oh, the

Chris Williams:

Cause the example I gave

Joe Patrice:

Was

Chris Williams:

Kamala. Fair enough.

Joe Patrice:

But I mean, if she had won and somebody had left the court, it was going to be replaced by some Democratic judge. Right. Or pro lagar or something like that. Right. The current solicitor general,

Chris Williams:

It might’ve been a Dick Cheney fan, but who knows?

Joe Patrice:

I don’t think they were going to, she was going to put Liz on there as a,

Kathryn Rubino:

This is life is not actually the West Wing. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Not just today, but all year. And we will catch up with you in the next year. 2025 will be the next time we talk. Maybe we’ll have things we want to talk about. And you will too, will you? Yeah. But thanks everybody for listening. Leave reviews, stars, write things. All of those help the algorithms know where we are. You should also listen to the Au Katherine’s other podcast. I’m a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. You should listen to the other shows on the Legal Talk network. You should be reading Above the Law, so you read these and other stories. Before we get to them, social media is a thing above law.com at Joe Patrice at Kathryn one the numeral one. And at writes for rent as in writing, not

Kathryn Rubino:

14th amendment

Joe Patrice:

Related, not 14th amendment right. Those are our blue sky places. Some residual hanging out at Twitter, but not much. And with all of that said, we’ll talk to you next year.

Kathryn Rubino:

Peace.

Chris Williams:

Peace.

Continue Reading