The John Roberts Webinar Of Power

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Joe Patrice:  Hello.

Kathryn Rubino:  Happy New Year.

Joe Patrice:  Well, yes. Welcome to another edition of Think Like A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law. That was Kathryn Rubino who decided to yell over my intro as usual.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s kind of a thing we do. I got to say Happy New Year.

Joe Patrice:  You used we, which I think is the wrong — it’s a thing you do.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s a thing to you.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, okay.

Kathryn Rubino:  So hence, it’s we.

Joe Patrice:  I’m kind of involuntarily being drawn into the we.

Kathryn Rubino:  Listen, there’s a lot of things that I get drawn into that are your bullshit, so.

Joe Patrice:  I mean, maybe.

Chris Williams:  Coming all strong in the beginning of the year. I like this.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, no.

Kathryn Rubino:  Same energy, going into 2022 with the same energy. But listen, I know that you’re like just itching to start a new sound effect. So, I feel very confident that I get pulled into your bullshit.

Joe Patrice:  Okay. I mean that’s–

Kathryn Rubino:  See.

Joe Patrice:  I mean, but you have any resolutions like this year like mine was to use fewer sound effects because I know that you.

Kathryn Rubino:  No I wasn’t. No I wasn’t. No I wasn’t.

Joe Patrice:  No, because I know that you don’t love it.

Kathryn Rubino:  You’re lying. You are lying.

Joe Patrice:  No, I mean, I have stuck with it and I plan to stick with it as long as I stick with any resolution.

[Music]

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, yeah

Kathryn Rubino:  Be proud of yourself.

Joe Patrice:  I am, I really am. This is the section of the show where we have small talk. What’s up?

Kathryn Rubino:  Do you have any New Year’s resolutions that you are actually making and keeping?

Joe Patrice:  Not really.

Chris Williams:  I had one that I already broke.

Kathryn Rubino:  Nice.

Joe Patrice:  Oh yeah?

Chris Williams:  Yeah, so I was so like okay  What is life without a challenge and added difficulty? So, I was then going to have three resolutions that are actually difficulty for me. One is going to be I’m going to actually start going to the doctor because I’m just so used to not having insurance. I’m like, wait, I have insurance now. I can do this. Let’s see how my appendix is  Second, will be I ‘m going to do no flesh for 2022, so fish, pig, long pig, none of that.

Joe Patrice:  Long pig.

Chris Williams:  Third one, thirds one was no alcohol and I’m not sure which one is more difficult, that or no meat. I found out it was more alcohol because at 12:01 I drank. It went Happy New Year. New Year’s cheers because I’m not alone, sip, oh shit. So, I gave myself like a two-minute waiver. I’m still going stick with it, but I just have a bottle of a gin singing a siren song at me and I got my headphones to try and black it out.

Joe Patrice:  Just have your resolution set to central time or something. In that way you had a two-hour — you get an hour waiver.

Kathryn Rubino:  But that also means if you actually kept it that would mean a New Year’s for 2023 you couldn’t have champagne until 1 a.m.

Joe Patrice:  Right, I mean, look. You celebrate with the Don Lemon podcast. Don Lemon broadcast, not with the Anderson and Andy broadcast.

Kathryn Rubino:  Amazing.

Chris Williams:  I don’t know the reference you’re making but I’m just going say boo either way.

Joe Patrice:  I’m going to give you the  — oh the reference is the trick that I found this year that people were missing is there’s still people who even though Dick Clark is no longer alive, still feel doggedly devoted to watching the Ryan Seacrest —

Kathryn Rubino:  Rockin’ New Year.

Joe Patrice:  –version of Dick Clark. And the answer to the correct broadcast to watch New Year is CNN because Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper did the New York part of it and then Don Lemon does the part in the central time zone from Norlands and the premise of CNN’s coverage is they get wildly blitzed on camera and just keep talking. It is all just all of these anchors that incompletely — 

Kathryn Rubino:  I think that we should sue you for copyright infringement. That’s basically will lead you here.

Joe Patrice:  That’s basically the above the law business model. Listen, no, it’s fantastic and it’s the most entertaining show every year now, so.

Chris Williams:  I saw a clip one about–

Joe Patrice: Oh Yeah.

Chris Williams:   –the one that was like a New Year’s resolution no more broke dick.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, yeah. That was part of the Don Lemon part, yeah.

Chris Williams:  I’m going to be having a lot less sex this year. People actually keep up with that. So please give broke men a chance.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, but that’s the thing. That was the CNN broadcast. They’re fantastic for New Years. Probably not the brand that the news organization wants, but definitely the brand that I want to watch on New Year’s Eve.

Chris Williams:  Just be clear. If anyone that works for them is listening, this is an explicit invitation to do that at Above the Law. Feel free. Come to depth for records. I’ll have the gin, I can’t drink it, so.

Joe Patrice:  All right, yeah, so, I guess–

Kathryn Rubino:  So do we think are there any legal-based resolutions that we all have?

(00:05:00)

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I am actually trying to make a judgment call here. Yeah.

[Music]

Joe Patrice:  I’m moving this to real topic.

Kathryn Rubino:  Wow, wow.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, all right. New Year’s legal resolutions. Ways in which lawyers should and law students should start up their year.

Kathryn Rubino:  My advice for a New Year’s resolution is find a way to build for a scrolling TikTok.

Joe Patrice:  Nice. Yeah, professional reading.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well, yeah. There’s always professional reading I guess. But here’s the thing. TikTok, I don’t know how they do it, what their algorithm secret sauce is, but they keeps me on their app way more than any other social media and I have maybe a quarter of the ads that I get on any other social media. So, I don’t get how they’re making money, but they’re definitely occupying a lot of my time.

Chris Williams:  I want to say from personal experience as a person that gets technically paid to look at TikTok, it’s nice. I mean, I had a written motion to the sister whatever you all call it yet, but I prefer to be on TikTok and do that, so.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I don’t know. I guess there’s the — I thought about investing in my resolution, which does not really fit being a lawyer, but investing in those sometimes you see at the park one of those giant inflatable bubbles that a person is inside and rolls. I felt like investing in that company for when the return to office begins.

Kathryn Rubino:  Amazing.

Joe Patrice:  I feel like that’s going to be —

Kathryn Rubino:  Is that going to be 2022? At this rate.

Joe Patrice:  I mean, there are some firms that are already back I suppose, but yeah, a lot of firms seemed to be pushing off their date, which makes a lot of sense. Things keep getting, I won’t say worse, keep getting not over I guess is probably the right way to put it.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure we’ll ever see the end of COVID, right?

Joe Patrice:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  That just seems like the truth at this point.

Chris Williams:  I think there’s going be an update to driver’s licenses where they give you a blood type and then they say like the predominant strain, like “oh you got a delta.”

Joe Patrice:  Oh speaking of, we aren’t really all that organized right now and this probably is more of a going back to small talky kind of —

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s okay. You don’t have to.

Chris Williams:  They don’t have to until you say it, Joe.

Joe Patrice:  Well, no. It’s not when I say it, when they know it is —

Kathryn Rubino:  Oh god, he is going to do it again.

[Music]

Kathryn Rubino:  Is your New Year’s resolution to cause me more consternation?

[Music]

Kathryn Rubino:  You’re crazy.

Chris Williams:  That’s a wrong yes. That’s a wrong yes. I’m a fan. First off, let’s just —

Kathryn Rubino:  It is January 3rd.

Chris Williams:  Just to be clear, at some point of podcast do another one of those for the use of the word consternation because it’s too early in the year for that bullshit. But keep going.

Joe Patrice:  No, this is actually legally story but not one that we’ve researched or looked at, but is anybody following the NFT buckle going on?

Chris Williams:  Oh no.

Kathryn Rubino:  Definitely not.

Joe Patrice:  So, right now, there’s a complete melt down going on among crypto NFT advocates on the Twitter. They are all very staunchly libertarians who believe that the whole — we need crypto because federal banks are wrong and blah, blah, blah. So, is NFTs which are basically the same picture sold over and over slightly differently and then dumb people spend on them. One of the more popular ones somebody has just, because you can just copy the image, has just taken it and flipped it the other direction and started selling them for themselves and people are in meltdown mode on Twitter as these folks are like we need to have some sort of way to deal with this kind of thievery or whatever it’s like. So you’ve discovered bank regulations and it’s just —

Chris Williams:  Oh that’s brilliant.

Joe Patrice:  This is amazing. It’s worth watching.

Chris Williams:  I love this.

Joe Patrice:  If you haven’t been following it highly I recommend following the slow breakdown of the libertarian mindset as they realized that regulations are necessary to prevent thievery.

Chris Williams:  Oh my god.

Kathryn Rubino:  Amazing. I also had a moment over break where it was like this is why we have banking regulations. I was at a family gathering and I have an older cousin who is a bit of a gold bug, whatever, obviously, maybe not obviously but in fact accurate and she was saying how her grandmother would get angry if anybody was suggesting putting money in the bank because she lived through the great depression and banks were unsafe and she needed to have money under her bed and I was like but that doesn’t mean you should buy gold bullion now because now we have the FDIC. Like we have — it’s not the same, right?  But I was just very happy to not be talking about any other conspiracy theory so I was comfortable leaning into this is why we have FDIC.

(00:10:08)

Chris Williams:  My brain went a totally different direction. I was like, oh my God, I can already see some undergraduate or some postdoctoral student writing an essay on non-fungible tokens and like difference in repetition and like inverting images. And if that made no sense, it’s because it doesn’t, but somebody still going to write it and when it tells about reading then I won’t.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s all a simulation, right? This is what I’ve come to believe.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, no, so I —

Chris Williams:  (00:10:32). I think he was right on most things except the things that were bad. He was just very right on those.

Kathryn Rubino:  That is the most lawyerly thing. He was right except for when he was wrong.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, meaning cover your faces.

Chris Williams:  100% of the time. It works 100% of the time.

Joe Patrice:  That’s actually is a decent segue, that statement. So let’s hear from our friends at Lexicon and then change topics.

Advertiser:  Here’s a message, just for the attorneys out there. So you passed the bar, joined a firm or even built your own. Now, are you finding out that you’re doing more administration than actual law practice? Lexicon can help. Lexicon is a legal services and technology provider with over a decade of experience streamlining administrative tasks, like timekeeping, HR, billing, client intake, and more so you can focus on maximizing billable hours and increasing client satisfaction. Call 855-4-LEXICON or visit lexiconservices.com/go to learn more.

Joe Patrice:  So last week was the week of Dershowitz and Alan Dershowitz —

Kathryn Rubino:  See, there was a moment.

Joe Patrice:  Oh yeah, no. But we already have that.

Kathryn Rubino:  There you go. Where’s your clown noise now?

Joe Patrice:  So now we’re going to talk about Alan Dershowitz. All right, it worked.

Kathryn Rubino:  I can’t help it.

Joe Patrice:  Justifies every sound effect ever.

Chris Williams:  We are very serious here at Above the Law. That’s our resolution, only serious topic.

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s been building, right? Like all the nonsense you’ve made me deal with the past 18 months has come to fruition with that one.

Joe Patrice:  So Alan Dershowitz — you know, we going to have to cut off our mic here in a second. Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard professor who began this week. This is the more serious. There were two stories. The more serious one though was, which I transitioned to based on the sentence, he was right except for every time he was wrong. Early in the week he was in an interview and had nothing to do with the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but he chose to change the topic of this interview and say, “If I may, allow me to say that Archbishop Tutu was a bigot which bold —

Kathryn Rubino:  Bold cotton.

Joe Patrice:  Bold statement for a guy who had just — human rights icon, who had just died, but you know.

Kathryn Rubino:  Here we are.

Chris Williams:  Was it like a he only cared about humans take? Like what was the flavor of bigotry? 

Joe Patrice:  Well, and that’s the thing. There is something to what Dershowitz is saying. There’s a nugget in there, which is that —

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s buried.

Joe Patrice:  It is buried

Chris Williams:  Stop with the gold metaphors people, god.

Joe Patrice:  There is a — 

Kathryn Rubino:  I’m going make you buy gold bullion before this is over.

Joe Patrice:  No, no, don’t.

Kathryn Rubino:  No, don’t. It’s stupid.

Joe Patrice:  So there’s a small group of folks who believe that Tutu was anti-Semitic and the argument for his anti-Semitism is based on a couple of things. One of which is that he generally expressed the idea that creating refugees out of Palestinians was a bad thing. That said, Tutu was also a very staunch defender of Israel’s right to exist, which would seemed to push against the idea that they are trying to cast him as some sort of anti-Semite. And another is that in the immediate aftermath of his chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of Apartheid, he made some comments about how the post-holocaust could have been handled differently if they the world had adopted more of a Truth and Reconciliation when it came to German involvement rather than a more retributive model, which you can’t argue about that but within the context of that that would seem as though he was clearly talking about the successes of what had just happened in South Africa and trying to compare. I don’t think he was saying we should have given him a break or anything.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right. No. No, I don’t think that’s it. As I recall, a bunch of Holocaust scholars and stuff agreed with —

Joe Patrice:  Defended him.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right, defended him.

Joe Patrice:  The head of the Anti-Defamation League came out and said like, yeah, these are statements I disagree with, but in no way is this anti-Semitism, which I think was useful.

(00:15:08)

Kathryn Rubino:  Nuance is actually important. But, you know, its Alan Dershowitz 

Joe Patrice:  But anyway, Dershowitz decided to hijack some interview that had nothing to do with that to toss that up there, which when I wrote it up, I really thought it was going to be the biggest Dershowitz story of the week. And then it wasn’t. 

Chris Williams:  That is what we call foreshadowing.

Kathryn Rubino:  Okay, that’s fair.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, that was fair.

Kathryn Rubino:  That was fair.

Chris Williams:  Yeah.

Joe Patrice:  So, just, like, Maxwell, the — 

Kathryn Rubino:  Epstein associate.

Joe Patrice:  Epstein associate is a good term for it, yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  Guilty.

Joe Patrice:  Guilty

Kathryn Rubino:  Guilty.

Joe Patrice: Guilty. While sentencing is coming and could be complicated by a decision to maybe start cooperating now, who knows, but the associate of Jeffrey Epstein who was charged with being a kind of operating in something —

Kathryn Rubino:  Sex trafficking.

Joe Patrice:  –assembling a pimp roll as a sex trafficker. That happened. And the BBC decided that they needed some expert commentary and analysis.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well that seems fine.

Joe Patrice:  As cable news networks do. I’m not a huge, you know, like whatever. I’m not going to disparage them for trying to get some analysis of a criminal verdict. Especially one in America, which is BBC.

Kathryn Rubino:  Different legal system. I get it.

Joe Patrice:  So they looked in the Rolodex and decided to try and find an expert willing to talk about criminal law in the U.S. and apparently decided that they struck gold on one they called Dershowitz.

Kathryn Rubino:  Next town. Next town.

Joe Patrice:  This of course is a problem as Dershowitz is accused of being involved in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking issue. Epstein was a client and friend of his, he has admitted to getting massages at the guy’s house, but, you know, he kept his underwear on. So now you’ve thought about Alan Dershowitz’s underwear. And we get to move on.  You’re shaking your head. Oh, see. Now I’ve lost Chris of this. I had Chris while I was harassing you with these sound effects.

Chris Williams:  No, no, no. Here’s the problem with interpreting body language. I’m shaking my head because I’m like this bastard is lucky I don’t have access to the sound board. Because Kathryn every time you say Joe is bad I’d be worse because no one appreciate that. Well, go on. Continue your story as I judge you.

Kathryn Rubino:  Continue.

Joe Patrice:   Yeah, the BBC — 

Kathryn Rubino:  That seems like a wild breakdown of journalistic integrity.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, well.

Kathryn Rubino:  If I may.

Joe Patrice:  As one might imagine, he did not have a lot to say about the guilty verdict per se, as much as an ability he is turning it into. So, clearly this means that I am did not have been —

Kathryn Rubino:  Incredibly innocent.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, could not have been involved with his argument being that the prosecution decided not — among the many witnesses they called to secure a conviction, they did not call one of the accusers, which happen to be the one who is involved in a legal dispute with Dershowitz, which was sparked by Dershowitz saying she’s a liar and she doesn’t know it and if she thinks she’s telling too she can sue me, which she sued him. But that person never got called and he says that must mean that the prosecution thought that she was an unreliable witness, which could be true.

Kathryn Rubino:  An interpretation.

Joe Patrice:  That could be true. There are however, also many other reasons not to call a particular witness. Among them not bringing in somebody that would have invited the weird Dershowitz side show into a trial.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right, especially now when you apparently had plenty of evidence because it wasn’t particularly long. 

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. The BBC has since I apologize for the collapse of its journalistic standards in inviting this. But my takeaway on this was this is a problem and if anyone from cable news is listening, just want throw this out there. The big problem is cable news reliance on the same people over and over again.  They get in their head that this person will answer my calls and show up and do a decent job and then that’s the only person they ever call.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right.

Joe Patrice: And that’s how you end up with Alan Dershowitz getting called for a case that he’s a material —

Kathryn Rubino:  A potential, yeah.

Joe Patrice:  He’s at least material to it to the extent that he was a friend and adviser to this person, whether putting aside underwear massages that can go over there. By the way, he’s involved in it and they do this because they don’t want to branch out and try new people and to some extent that’s understandable because not everyone is as telegenic as we are but —

(00:20:00)

Chris Williams:  As we say on the radio.

Joe Patrice:  As we say on the radio, well, we can see each other. But not — they want to make sure it’s somebody who’s not going flop on the air but just expand a little bit. You don’t have to go with a new person every time. Just try out some new people. Just make that your cable news’ 2022 try to have more voices, more diverse voices and just because cable news is not as diverse as it should be period, but also diverse as in just different people putting above and beyond everything else just because they’re different perspectives that you probably should have and some of them should be people who aren’t —

Kathryn Rubino:  Involved.

Joe Patrice:  — implicated in the case.

Chris Williams:  Or at least wear more than underwear. Come on now Alan.

Joe Patrice:  Right. That was my takeaway. And look, I’ve been on TV before the Al Jazeera Network which — Al Jazeera America which no longer exists, but I did court analysis for them and I was on a few times and there was something too once I did it once. They were like, “Oh, well, he can do this,” so I got invited back and I get that. But the whole idea of taking a chance on a new person, that was good, and I think more networks need to be doing that because there’s more perspectives out there and they get a little siloed when they just ask the same people.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, and I mean, listen, there are a lot of people who went to law school, and the reason and they have opinions–

Joe Patrice:  And they did that to become court analysts. Oh, no. Oh, did they? Oh not just to be on TV. Oh, they want to be lawyer right?

Kathryn Rubino: They probably want be lawyer is I want to say. 

Joe Patrice:  So you went to law school to be a lawyer, not an accountant. Take advantage of Nota no-cost, IOLTA account management tool that helped solo and small law firms track client funds down to the penny. Enjoy peace of mind with one-click reconciliation, automated transaction alerts and real time bank data. Visit trustnoda.com/legal to learn more. Terms and conditions may apply. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Smooth, smooth.

Joe Patrice:  I thought so. 

Kathryn Rubino:  I liked it. 

Joe Patrice:  The Supreme Court.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, John Roberts has a lot to say, huh? Well, the Supreme Court’s annual year-end report comes out which is — it’s like the State of the Union of the Federal Judiciary which right now. I mean, you got to think about it.

Chris Williams:  I just want say one thing about this before we get into like the potatoes and whatever it is, soup metaphor for like the real stuff. The picture I saw in an article that I was talking about is like “we’re impartial.” Got like a black disposable mask on, had his judge robes on, had a tie-dye had little dolphins on it. I appreciate the whimsy. I don’t know if that was a recent photo but I was like “Oh, look at that.” That was so, you know. 

Kathryn Rubino:  That’s going to be within the past couple of years if he had a mask on.

Chris Williams:  Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:  It at least dates it from 2020 on.

Chris Williams:  Got it. Sometimes I hear that the Supreme Court justices just write in rooms that are so chock-full of freedoms. It’s like oxygen if it’s too much you act like you get (00:23:00). Keep the freedom at Bay, especially with those like (00:23:04) decisions.

Joe Patrice:  When you say before we get into the substance of it, don’t worry, there was very little. Despite the fact that the — yeah, I guess that’s, yeah.

[Music]

Joe Patrice:  So despite the fact that we have something of a legitimacy crisis burgeoning more for the first time in, at least in my memory, I think it is at least as far back as like the New Deal, the majority of the country does not agree with the Supreme Court, like disapproves of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.

Kathryn Rubino:  Well that will get better once they take away some fundamental rights for half of the population.

Joe Patrice:  Well, I mean, that’s the thing. Right, and that’s the thing. They’re flirting with disaster on all of these decisions. Obviously, the abortion ones, the big ticket one, but we’ve from voting rights forward we’ve been having increasing just jettisoning of half-century worth of precedent. They’ve got dingbats who’ve been nominated for federal judgeships that the ABA says is unqualified and have nonetheless taken their seats and proven the ABA correct. 

Kathryn Rubino:  It’s something like leaning into, you know.

Joe Patrice:  Amidst all of this. Rather than try to do something to build up confidence in the judiciary. He focused on a couple of other issues, The Wall Street Journal report about how many federal judges should have recused themselves, but didn’t. Situations where they own stock in a company they were deciding on and so on. 

Kathryn Rubino:  And that’s a pretty big issue. 

Joe Patrice:  It is and now in some of the cases, I will say about the Wall Street Journal report when I read it. There were definitely some bad situations in there. But there were also situations where somebody had a mutual fund that had a pressure in saying something, so like it was a little more attenuated.

Kathryn Rubino: There’s a spectrum. But without any clear rules there were enough that were awful.

(00:25:03)

Joe Patrice:  Right. Well in those had clear rules and that’s the issue because lower courts do have clear rules. Mind you the Supreme Court has none. There are no ethical rules for the Supreme Court at all. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Rules are there are no rules.

Joe Patrice:  Correct. And as far as the lower courts there are rules that were being preached here and this would be a place where the Chief Justice could say something like we are looking into it and recommending impeachment of certain judges who were gross repeat offenders something like that. He instead said that after talking a lot about William Howard Taft. He said that the courts are the only people who can legitimately police themselves and he promised that they will have some webinars about this.

Kathryn Rubino:  Amazing, amazing. 

Joe Patrice:  He also addressed something you’ve reported on. If you want to give a quick recap of the clerks’ workplace harassment issues that came fore last year.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, well, it actually started I think way back in 2018 when we started getting reports of federal judges, quite notably Judge Kozinski who was accused of harassing clerks who worked for them. And you know, it’s a situation where the relationship between clerk and federal judge is kind of a unique one. It’s also somebody you would then lean on for recommendations and all sorts of future positive employment references and whatnot. And there’s really no system in place for folks who have complaints against the judge that they work for. And there have been plenty of reports of — this continues to be an issue and there’s not really a way to protect folks who are in that position. You’re talking about somebody who’s like right out of law school, maybe a year of other clerkship experience. So it’s someone fairly young in their career, working for a federal judge, which is presumably very respected and so there’s a tremendous power dynamic at play as well and not really a way to address that.

Joe Patrice:  Well, Chief Justice Roberts has heard your concerns and he has come up with a way to address that. And what he suggests is they will improve ways of recognizing and correcting that. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Fantastic.

Joe Patrice:  He doesn’t go into details on correcting, but I think —

Kathryn Rubino:  We see that there’s a problem.

Joe Patrice:  But I think it’s a webinar.

Chris Williams:  Guys, quick question. Everybody knows this is like some tongue-in-cheek commentary to keep people off their backs, right? Or do people actually think that this is like legitimate responses to criticism.

Joe Patrice:  That’s a good question. I don’t even think it’s a legitimate response to these two scandals. I think this was all of veiled attempt to just say —

Chris Williams:  It’s only a boilerplate. 

Joe Patrice:  Well, for me I think it’s about sending the signal that he’s going to reject the other branches doing any attempt that are performed.

Kathryn Rubino:  Right. So, if some, if any, if there’s –no, there’s not going to be, but if there was an executive or legislative response there, he’s setting up the scenario where he says that doesn’t apply. You can’t regulate us. 

Joe Patrice:  Which I think is —

Kathryn Rubino:  Bold.

Joe Patrice:  Bold and deeply troubling for the institution of the judiciary because I’m on record as a person who thinks that expanding the Supreme Court would be a bad idea long-term. I think that it would open a new can of politicization that would be problematic and there are better ways for everybody to address it. But the problem with this kind of line in the sand is Roberts is essentially saying I refuse to do anything, but let you constitutionally nuke me. He’s setting the situation where there is no alternative, but court expansion if anybody wants to do anything at all, and I guess he’s betting that the people will flinch, but I just find that dangerous when they’re more sound and well-regarded efforts to reform a something of a middle ground as well as a long-term solution like staggered term limits for people serving on the active court or something, mandatory senior status, et cetera, et cetera and they just — he’s very much making clear that he would reject all of that and force you to go all the way to court expansion.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yey. I mean, listen, why not have more constitutional crises, right? Like I mean — I think that’s crise? I mean, we’ve already survived the 2020 constitutional crisis of January 6.

Chris Williams:  We did.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. See. See she’s pulling people into the we again.

Chris Williams:  Yeah.

Joe Patrice:  She started this show.

Chris Williams:  Kathryn speaks French now.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah. All right.

Kathryn Rubino:  Yeah, it’s good times.

Joe Patrice:  Well, cool everybody. We should probably wrap this up because we’ve been going for a while here. So, thanks everybody.

Chris Williams:  This is a fun episode.

(00:30:03)

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I had fun. Thanks everybody for listening. You should be subscribed to the show. So you get new episodes when they come out. You should leave review stars as well as write something. The act of writing shows that you’re engaged, which means that the algorithms that now rule our lives would recognize that you cared and therefore recommend it to more people. So that’s good. You should be reading Above the Law as always. That way you can see these and other stories as they come out. You should be listening to the Jabot, Kathryn’s podcast that deals with diversity in the law. And you should also listen to the Legaltech News.

Kathryn Rubino:  Joe, you’re on the show.

Chris Williams:  Damn.

Joe Patrice:  See the thing is there are two publications and this is not Legaltech News. Even though there are people from Legaltech News on it, it is the Legaltech Week journalist’s roundtable.

Chris Williams:  Dude, write it down. Stick it on to your computer, sticky note.

Kathryn Rubino:  Seriously. Come on.

Chris Williams:  Get it tattooed like right across the neck. Okay, make that might be too drastic but something.  You say it every week. 

Kathryn Rubino:  Every week.

Chris Williams:  And also if you’re listening please watch Don’t Look Up because I want to make jokes about it in my pieces this week so I want somebody to get my punch lines. But yeah, come on Joe.

Kathryn Rubino: Get it together Patrice.

Joe Patrice:  You should listen to other shows on the Legal Talk Network. See, everybody goes with LTNs. Anyway, the Legal Talk Network, you should be checking out us on social media. I’m @josephpatrice. She’s @kathryn1, the numeral one. He’s @rightsforrent. We like to thank Lexicon and Nota powered by M&T Bank for sponsoring and I think that’s everything so–

Kathryn Rubino:  Peace.

Joe Patrice:  Yeah, I think happy whatever.

Kathryn Rubino:  2022

Joe Patrice:  Cool

Chris Williams:  Have a good one.

[Music]

Continue Reading