It Was Only A Matter Of Time Before We Had To Talk About This Again

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Joe Patrice: This is Thinking Like a Lawyer.

Kathryn Rubino: Hey.

Joe Patrice: See, like, I didn’t even say welcome back. Like, why are you doing this? This is Thinking Like a Lawyer.

Kathryn Rubino: You did it to get me to stop. So can’t stop, won’t stop.

Chris Williams: Roc-A-Fella Records.

Joe Patrice: I’m Joe Patrice. That’s Catherine Rubino and Chris Williams. We’re from Above The Law. We come here every week to have a quick conversation about some of the big stories in the legal and legal adjacent world that we’ve been covering at Above The Law, or even if we haven’t been covering them, but usually we’ve been covering them at Above The Law. So that’s what we’re here to do yet again this week, talk about the week that was in law, which is always exciting. Yeah, that was what I was hoping for, some kind of a reaction.

Kathryn Rubino: You got it.

Joe Patrice: No. Good, good.

Kathryn Rubino: Good new.

Joe Patrice: Well, all right, so let’s begin our segment on having a little bit of small talk.

Kathryn Rubino: Small talk.

Joe Patrice: All right.

Kathryn Rubino: Small talk.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Kathryn Rubino: I really like that part.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. No, I hear you. I hear you.

Chris Williams: It’s the reason I show up to the show, really.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough. Anybody got anything interesting going on in life?

Kathryn Rubino: I’m having a good day, but not as good as Travis Kelce.

Joe Patrice: Oh, nice. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: So there’s that.

Joe Patrice: No, that’s fair. So for people out there who don’t know–

Kathryn Rubino: Living under a rock somewhere.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I mean, it is difficult to avoid this.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, Travis Kelce appears to be dating the one and only Taylor Alison Swift.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Oh, my God.

Kathryn Rubino: Did you really not know?

Chris Williams: I’m Patrick. I’ve been under a rock, apparently. I mean, I don’t really follow.

Kathryn Rubino: You don’t have to follow anything. You just have to be alive.

Chris Williams: Listen, we all have rough weekends.

Joe Patrice: You know, the Bears also had a rough weekend at the hands of Travis Kelce.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes. He may have two Super Bowl rings, but this was his biggest game yet. Taylor Swift was in his box sitting next to Mama Kelce. They appear to be having a grand old time.

Joe Patrice: He has two rings. Are they shiny things or –?

Kathryn Rubino: Yes.

Chris Williams: All right, that’s the podcast. That’s it. We’ll see you next week.

Joe Patrice: Oh, come on. I deserve all sorts of credit for that one.

Chris Williams: And shame.

Joe Patrice: I live in a constant cloud of shame. So that’s not really change anything.

Kathryn Rubino: Otherwise known as being raised Catholic. But yeah. No, it’s great fun. They appear to have gone to a restaurant that they bought out, the whole restaurant for the evening, took a nice ride in a classic convertible car, literally rode into the sunset. It is everything I am living for right now.

Joe Patrice: I am very much looking forward to this breakup album. Anyway.

Kathryn Rubino: We’ll see. This is not like other people she’s been linked to, at least doesn’t appear to be.

Joe Patrice: And that he doesn’t look like an emaciated Victorian child.

Kathryn Rubino: He does not look like he’s survived tuberculosis last winter, so there’s that. Although with his new mustache, he looks some kind of way. I’m not a big fan of the mustache solo without the beard attached, but appears to work for Taylor.

Joe Patrice: Well, there we go.

Chris Williams: I don’t even think we need to really get to the Blackface. This should be the brunt of the discussion.

Kathryn Rubino: I mean, I could talk longer if you would like about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

Chris Williams: I think that’s what Joe wants.

Joe Patrice: No, it is not. That said, I will say I know you know what the agenda for the discussion is, but when you drop, this can replace the conversation about Blackface. I feel like we should clarify. There is a reason for that that is not coming out of —

Chris Williams: No, it’s not.

Joe Patrice: All right. Okay. This show got off the rails really quick.

Chris Williams: That’s what happens when Blackface gets you both.

Kathryn Rubino: It is exactly where it’s supposed to be.

Chris Williams: Right.

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, I went there.

Joe Patrice: All right.

Kathryn Rubino: Does anybody have anything else? I want to talk to you besides Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce because I don’t. That is what I want to talk about all the time. My group texts with various different groups of friends have been blowing up since this was unveiled, and it is just really occupying a lot of my time and energy at the moment.

Joe Patrice: My ducks decided to put an end to the Deion Sanders Cinderella story.

Kathryn Rubino: Quack, quack. That was a hell of a game.

Joe Patrice: That was exciting for me.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Well, it was not a hell of a game. It was a hell of an ass beating what it was.

Kathryn Rubino: Imagine for Ducks fan. I am also.

Joe Patrice: It was a lot of fun.

Kathryn Rubino: It was a lot of fun to watch that happen. The Duck had to do quite a few push-ups.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: What was it, a 35-point victory?

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, not bad.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, so there’s that. I’m going to Chicago this week for relativity fest.

(00:05:00)

So we might have some exciting e-discovery conversations next week.

Kathryn Rubino: The word maybe is an interesting one. It’s a choice.

Joe Patrice: So you’re right. We will definitely have some exciting e-discovery talks.

Kathryn Rubino: You may talk about it. I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s exciting.

Chris Williams: Did you ever touch the Bean(ph)?

Joe Patrice: Oh, no, I haven’t actually.

Kathryn Rubino: Touched what?

Joe Patrice: The bean.

Chris Williams: The thing in Chicago.

Joe Patrice: Chicago stuff. You don’t understand.

Chris Williams: All the cool kids do it. You know you can flick it if you want.

Kathryn Rubino: I thought our conversation was going further off the rails in a very specific way.

Chris Williams: It was contextual.

Kathryn Rubino: Was it?

Chris Williams: Yeah. But no, it’s a Chicago landmark. It’s like that and those strange hot dogs they sell. They’re like —

Kathryn Rubino: I’ve heard of the hot dogs, I’ve heard of the pizza. I’ve been to Chicago a few times. Never dealt with the bean situation.

Joe Patrice: Really?

Kathryn Rubino: Yes, Joe. What are you incredible about? That I’ve been to Chicago?

Joe Patrice: No, that you have no idea what the bean is.

Kathryn Rubino: I don’t.

Chris Williams: Look how the turntables. Who’s under the rock now? I said that wrong on purpose.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure you did. All right, let’s end this.

Joe Patrice: Really?

Kathryn Rubino: No, we guess we don’t have to.

Joe Patrice: Well, that was the end of it, as it turns out.

Kathryn Rubino: Are you happy now that you interrupted me.

Joe Patrice: I feel like this is a tit for tat situation because you did it first. Now I’m just responding. I want peace.

Kathryn Rubino: Do you?

Joe Patrice: Yeah, you just keep pushing this.

Kathryn Rubino: What if I could never give you peace? See, that was a Taylor Swift reference. Boom. That’s how you do it.

Chris Williams: I didn’t catch it.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, you don’t know the Taylor Swift oeuvre, so it makes it harder to catch.

Chris Williams: Not the —

Kathryn Rubino: Like a Pokemon. See, that’s a reference for you.

Chris Williams: Okay, you win this time. Never again. Never again.

Joe Patrice: All right.

Kathryn Rubino: Is your brain hurting you, Joe?

Chris Williams: On a lighter note, do you want to talk Blackface?

Joe Patrice: No, my brain is —

Kathryn Rubino: So let’s talk Blackface.

Joe Patrice: My brain is hurting me in the same way that it probably hurts Amy Coney Barrett who —

Kathryn Rubino: Oh, we were there first.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Well, I mean, you gave me a better transition to that.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, we had been slow playing the Blackface here.

Joe Patrice: Well, that’s the thing. That’s not a transition to just keep saying the word Blackface. We will get to the Blackface —

Chris Williams: Blackface, you say.

Kathryn Rubino: You’re just trying to get people to keep on listening, like, don’t shut it off. We’re going to talk about Blackface, I promise.

Joe Patrice: I’m really dreading having to write the title for this episode because it’s clearly going to have to be like, Blackface, you say, and that’s not good. Let’s try to make sure we can come up with something else.  All right.

Chris Williams: I’m on board. And make sure you like your faces in the screenshot.

Kathryn Rubino: There was a survey done by the Annenberg Constitution. The Annenberg folks, they did a survey about civics, and the results are horrifying.

Joe Patrice: Oh, no.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. Most people don’t know what the First Amendment comes up with. Okay, pop quiz hotshot. What freedoms are protected by the First Amendment?

Chris Williams: Guns.

Joe Patrice: This is of course the exact same question that Amy Coney Barrett fluffed at the, flubbed —

Kathryn Rubino: At her – yeah, confirmation.

Joe Patrice: Not fluffed, flubbed.

Kathryn Rubino: Flubbed. Like you flubbed saying flubbed.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Irony.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, it is. Thanks, Alanis. Anyway —

Kathryn Rubino: So are you just trying to get some extra time to come up with the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment?

Joe Patrice: No, because it’s —

Chris Williams: Dylan(ph), dylan, dylan, dylan and dylan.

Joe Patrice: I have no idea what that was.

Kathryn Rubino: You don’t get that?

Chris Williams: Really? Dave Chappelle? Is that before you all’s time? The best five rappers. Somebody listening is going to get that, and it’s going to be hilarious. Leave that.

Kathryn Rubino: Fair enough.

Chris Williams: Trust me.

Joe Patrice: Right. Okay. Well, we’ve got the freedom of speech, which most people don’t seem to understand even that, even granting that.

Kathryn Rubino: 77% of people, though, do know that it exists in some way.

Joe Patrice: In some sense.

Kathryn Rubino: In some sense. Maybe they don’t understand the intricacies of First Amendment jurisprudence, but they’re aware that it exists.

Joe Patrice: The most important one for the three of us, press.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes. 28% got that one, right?

Joe Patrice: Okay.

Kathryn Rubino: Don’t worry. It gets worse.

Joe Patrice: All right, so obviously there’s — this one’s always a tricky one because it’s religion, though technically, that should be two I think because free exercise establishment should be two different things.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure, but it is generally grouped together.

Joe Patrice: On the other hand, the establishment clause doesn’t exist anymore per the Supreme Court.

Kathryn Rubino: So now, we know. 40% said freedom of religion.

Joe Patrice: Okay, so you can assemble.

Kathryn Rubino: 33% people know that.

Joe Patrice: Okay. You can certainly petition for redress of your grievances.

(00:10:02)

Kathryn Rubino: And here’s where it gets really bad. Only 9% do. That was true.

Joe Patrice: Swinging a myth.

Kathryn Rubino: And the folks that were able to hit a homerun and get all five, that was only 5%. So that means that —

Joe Patrice: We’re the 95%. That’s what I get out of that.

Kathryn Rubino: Or the five.

Joe Patrice: Or no, we’re the five. Yeah, all right. Oh, God. Yeah, right.

Kathryn Rubino: Amy Coney Barrett did 95%.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, right.

Kathryn Rubino: What I think is interesting also is that 4% of people know that the right to petition the government is included in the First Amendment, but missed something else.

Joe Patrice: Right. Yeah, that is there.

Kathryn Rubino: That’s the hard one.

Joe Patrice: I now understand how I got that wrong. I meant to say 95th percentile. That’s what we are.

Kathryn Rubino: That is, that is.

Joe Patrice: Not the 95, the 95th percentile. Anyway.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes, but it was funny to me and to people who are old enough to remember when Amy Coney Barrett ascended to the throne, because that’s what I believe the Supreme Court is how they think of themselves these days and she struggled to list all of the First Amendment freedoms in her confirmation. So it was just, it was a nice little callback to a great moment that we should never forget. Also, which reminded me when I was doing research for this story, which was a great little moment, was Amy Coney Barrett’s nickname at the.

Joe Patrice: Amy COVID Barrett.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, you remember.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: It’s good stuff.

Joe Patrice: Because she was patient zero in the giving Trump COVID discussion.

Kathryn Rubino: Well, I guess you don’t know she had it.

Joe Patrice: Well, fair enough. She was the impetus. Well, the party –

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, her nomination party. That’s what it was. It wasn’t just — a bunch of people got it, right? Like Chris Christie. Every day somebody new came out saying they had gotten COVID because they attended this party.

Chris Williams: Before we move to the next thing, isn’t this the same study that also said that about 23% of the people thought the First Amendment protected the right to guns?

Kathryn Rubino: Sure did.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: Sure did.

Joe Patrice: And I don’t see how it doesn’t, because that is a religion.

Kathryn Rubino: Mary Anne Franks, actually a professor wrote a book about that. That was very good, making that exact argument. I thought it was pretty on point. But I will say that I think the 22% think that the First Amendment includes the freedom to bear arms. It’s kind of a way that the survey was also formulated issue, because there were five blanks and I think that after, maybe after they couldn’t quite come up with anything else –

Joe Patrice: Oh, I see what you mean.

Kathryn Rubino: Right. They were just kind of like, this is another right I know about. Kind of, could be. I don’t know. Could be. So I like to think that the NRA is in a really good job about branding the Second Amendment so people actually know that it’s not the first.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Personally, that’s split issue about free exercise and establishment. I could very much see somebody missing either assembly or grievances and assuming the Fifth is splitting that in half, I think that’s fair.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: And frankly, there’s an argument that we as a country would be way better off if we recognized there were six freedoms and we did split that in half because the erosion of the establishment clause is part and parcel that people don’t view it as some sort of independent right.

Chris Williams: Yeah. And the Black Lives Matters protest was a great reminder that people don’t really remember that the right to protest is a right.

Joe Patrice: Oh, no.

Chris Williams: There was the, the amount of flash that people got for exercising the rights. There were lawyers that got in trouble for spitting on protesters that we’ve covered and I was like, this is just — I don’t think people thought of that as a constitutional violation.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. I mean, it’s multiple freedoms, right? Because it’s a freedom of speech there and assembly to the extent a lot of people are together.

Chris Williams: Right.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. But yeah, no, it’s one of those situations where it’s a right and people act as though it isn’t. It’s almost like they’re gaslighting somebody. We’ll take a break and then that transition will make a lot more sense.

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(00:15:00)

Joe Patrice: So I made an allusion to gaslighting.

Kathryn Rubino: Will it make sense, though.

Chris Williams: The perfect way to gaslight is to ignore that it happened and talk about Blackface.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, fair.

Kathryn Rubino: We covered last week a lawsuit that was filed by a former shareholder at Polsinelli Law Firm, big Law firm. Former equity partner filed lawsuit against the firm and two senior partners alleging sexual harassment over the course of many years at the firm saying that from the time she was got at the firm she was subjected to unwelcomed advances from those two partners and that not only would she have to contend with that, but when she rebuffed them that they were prominent partners in the field and were no longer interested in helping her build her practice and then her practice suffered and eventually she was let go by the firm. And she says that she was warned that there was mistreatment and impropriety and that there was a situation at the top of the firm and that when she did go to HR, that she was gaslit. She said that there was callous gaslighting in response to her claims of sexual harassment, but that given what she alleges was the culture at the firm, that that was not surprising.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. Well, I mean, this speaks to a bunch of the stuff we’ve talked about lately. I mean, the whole career suffering, the way in which all that happens speaks to some of the Joshua Wright stuff we’ve talked about recently. Yeah, it still seems to be a massive issue.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah. And the firm has come out and said that they take allegations of sexual harassment very seriously. They have robust reporting procedures in place, and that they are committed to having a harassment free workplace, but very early still. Obviously in the litigation process, the complaint has been filed, but not much else has happened. But it is very interesting that not just — I think that you hear that harassment still happens, that there might even be an expectation that some level of harassment occurs. But not only that it occurred in this instance, but it rose to the point where a partner is bringing the lawsuit, somebody who has their reputation, has their career, has their book of business very much on the line. I think it’s telling that we’re getting to the point where we’re starting seeing these kinds of lawsuits where it’s not just kind of junior associates or staff members who maybe have less invested in terms of firm, and they’re literally their equity stake, which she says she hasn’t gotten back yet. You know, it’s interesting.

Joe Patrice: Which isn’t to diminish or discourage folks more junior from coming forward, but it is important that more senior folks are doing. You know, that’s the same thing with the Joshua Wright allegations at the law school. The folks accusing him of starting affairs with them when they were one l’s and kind of dangling their career in the balance throughout that. They’re a partner and of counsel at a law firm now. So it is kind of a moment where senior attorneys are starting to stand up, which is important because it encourages folks further down the line.

Kathryn Rubino: I think it definitely encourages folks, and I also think that there was once a stigma that if you brought these allegations public, that you would be blackballed from the industry. And hopefully that perception has changed, at least.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, definitely. You know speaking of harassment, you know what’s another vector of harassment in this world?

Kathryn Rubino: Blackface.

Joe Patrice: Maybe.

Chris Williams: That’s where we were going with this. I would have never thought.

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(00:20:00)

Joe Patrice: You ever as a kid read that book? It was a Sesame Street book. It was like, Grover, there’s a monster at the end of this book.

Kathryn Rubino: Okay, that says how old you are, because now Elmo is the monster at the end of the book.

Joe Patrice: Oh, is it? All right. Well, anyway, the point is, there’s a Blackface at the end of this podcast that we’ve been leading up to. So it is almost October, which is the Halloween season, which is the inevitable point where we’re going to have some really awful stories about lawyers and law students thinking that Blackface is a thing they should be doing.

Kathryn Rubino: Don’t do it, don’t do it.

Joe Patrice: Don’t. But before we get there, we have a story of a law school situation. We have a law review who created a trophy.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes?

Joe Patrice: Trophy that they gave out for Bluebooking.

Kathryn Rubino: Okay.

Joe Patrice: And it was a football that they put a wig on because they said they had those in the office.

Kathryn Rubino: Okay, I spy a little lie in that story right there you’re saying a law review had a football in their office?

Joe Patrice: And a wig. Yeah, all cute. I think the wig is actually more unlikely than just having a football randomly around, but whatever. But they put a wig on this football and then put big googly eyes on it and then put giant red lips on it and then put it in their window.

Chris Williams: Oh, by the way, where’s the school?

Joe Patrice: Memphis.

Chris Williams: Memphis, Tennessee you say?

Joe Patrice: It is. It is.

Chris Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: And and I definitely encourage folks to check out the story that Joe wrote, because I had heard this and when we were kind of in our group chat about what was going on and I was like well, you know maybe they didn’t realize that the darkness of the football would maybe — and then I saw the image of it, and there’s zero doubt in my mind that that’s what that looks like.

Chris Williams: None.

Joe Patrice: It’s one of those situations where you could see how any individual element of this could have been explained as, “Oh, we didn’t know.” You could have used a football and put a wig on it, whatever. And it would have been like, “Oh, I could see how you would see that that’s what we’re doing”, but it’s not. Or you could have potentially put lips on something and said, like, whatever. But instead they created kind of like, as I put it, kind of like the Amos ‘N’ Andy Memorial Award, and then decided to put that as a thing that they handed. It was every element was putting together stereotypes, and it was, yeah, real ugly caricature situation. School and the law review have apologized and said, oh, this was such a mistake. But part of the bit for me is as problematic as this is, and it is on its face.  All I can think was —

Chris Williams: It’s platinum.

Joe Patrice: Yeah. No, that was it. That was it right there.

Chris Williams: Well, three fifths.

Kathryn Rubino: Better.

Joe Patrice: All right. We’re going to break —

Chris Williams: I have personally experience with this.

Joe Patrice: We’re going to break that sound effect here a second, because it’s going to keep coming up, I think. But as bad as this is, one of the things that got me was kind of the collective action problem here, right? It’s not that this happened, it’s that this happened and multiple people within the law review were involved and saw it, or maybe weren’t involved and saw it show up in the office, or maybe were not from the law review and passed it and saw it, and it was up for, like, 10 days. So over the course of 10 days, multiple people interacted with this trophy in some way before anybody decided to say, “Hey, I got a thought. No.”

Chris Williams: I wonder how many faculty members saw it.

Joe Patrice: Well, right. You’re right. Like, somebody had to have walked by this thing, right?

Kathryn Rubino: Many people.

Joe Patrice: I don’t really know the layout of the offices there. I know from my journal it’s at least plausible a faculty member didn’t see it from my journal because my journal, our offices were in a place that no self-respecting faculty member would ever go, but it still meant that upwards of 40 people would have passed it during that period. But again, I don’t know where their offices are. Some law schools have their law review offices in very prominent places in nice new all glass kind of offices and stuff where everybody can see things. So I don’t know the exact situation, but the point is, some large group of people interacted with this and seemed to have no sense that this was a problem for a long time.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah, that’s not great.

Joe Patrice: It is not. But it does set up what is inevitably going to be our October, where somebody is going to do this again like they do every year.

(00:25:08)

Chris Williams: What I like to do is I like to refer to doing Blackface as doing a Justin Trudeau impression.

Joe Patrice: Oh, yeah.

Chris Williams: Yeah. Because at one point, the Prime Minister of Canada, he felt really rhythmic that day. I don’t know.

Joe Patrice: I mean I feel — in my recollection is in that instance, it was not that there should be any distinction here, but he was dressing up as —

Chris Williams: I think it was a different character.  Aladdin or somehting.

Joe Patrice: He was dressing as Disney’s Aladdin. Yeah, that’s what he —

Chris Williams: Yeah. It wasn’t that dark.

Joe Patrice: And he decided to make himself dark for Disney’s Aladdin situation, which, I mean, it is bad in a lot of ways. It does not have kind of the same historical baggage of minstrelsy that this particular caricature does. I still think it’s very bad, but I can at least see the argument that a Canadian might not see that. But this is not what we’re talking about, because, again, as already has been pointed out, we’re in Memphis, Tennessee for this conversation. But anyway, that happened.

Kathryn Rubino: Yes. Yeah.

Joe Patrice: Any other –?

Kathryn Rubino: No discipline, right? To any of the folks involved?

Joe Patrice: No, everybody’s kind of taking it as this was an honest mistake.

Kathryn Rubino: Oopsie.

Joe Patrice: They’re you know, endeavoring to do better and so on. I would assume there’s going to be some sort of educational teachable moment here. And yeah.

Kathryn Rubino: We can only hope.

Chris Williams: Did James Holme cheer in yet about how this is about free speech?

Joe Patrice: I know, right? Like, where are all those guys right now who stand up for the free speech involved. Anyway, I mean, they’re too busy signing dumb letters about their old boss or something.

Kathryn Rubino: That seems likely.

Joe Patrice: Speaking of, we didn’t even — and this is without even having to touch on because it broke so late in the week without even touching on. But I guess we’ll kind of have a quick little coda on. Clarence Thomas is —

Kathryn Rubino: Still corrupt.

Joe Patrice: We’ve heard all of the things that he’s ever done unethically, right?

Kathryn Rubino: We’re never going to get to the end.

Joe Patrice: Oh, wait, there’s more.

Kathryn Rubino: It’ll be 20 years from now and somebody will be like, “We dug up more.”

Joe Patrice: Yeah. And Chris, you wrote about this, but Clarence Thomas more allegations.

Chris Williams: Oh, yeah. Connected to, like, a small group of fundraisers.

Joe Patrice: A Koch brethren’s event.

Chris Williams: Koch brothers.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: Yeah. And when you — I think there was a pledge to dump, like, $900 million into politics.

Kathryn Rubino: There you go.

Chris Williams: There’s going to be things before the court that Koch brothers are involved with that Clarence is going to sit on, because, of course, why would he excuse himself? Not like he has any moral binding code or anything.

Joe Patrice: Yes, more allegations. It is telling that we did not make this one of the major stories of this week because we all kind of went, well, obviously.

Kathryn Rubino: It sounds like it’s exhausting, which is kind of the problem. No one’s going to do anything about it. It’s exhausting to hear about, yes, he’s still corrupt.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Chris Williams: I think that — what I hope happens is instead of focusing on Thomas, there needs to be more shaming and guilting on Roberts because this is all happening under his watch. So as far as legacy, I think people need to talk about how this is going to screw the Roberts court’s legacy.

Joe Patrice: Oh, yeah.

Chris Williams: Because Thomas isn’t going to do anything. He’s been being bankrupt for over two decades. But you attack a person like, you know their place in history, there might be a change.

Kathryn Rubino: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: All right. Yeah. On that happy note, everything’s controlled by a series of corrupt people.

Kathryn Rubino: As opposed to the Blackface conversation, which was super happy times.

Chris Williams: Shades of enjoyment.

Joe Patrice: That’s fair. We did get some good jokes in. We didn’t really have any here.

Kathryn Rubino: Chris did well.

Joe Patrice: Well, right. Chris got jokes in. Yes.

Chris Williams: The queens, we’re all —

Joe Patrice: Yes. The show. It’s all for the show. All right, with all that said, let’s wrap this up. You should be subscribed to the show. That way you get new episodes. When they come out, you can read all the stories that we talked about here, as well as other stories that we don’t get to in a week by reading Above The Law of course. You should be following us on social media. The publication is at ATL blog. I’m @JosephPatrice, Kathryn’s @ Kathryn1, Chris is @RightsForRent.  Oh, and on blue sky I’m Joe Patrice. Kathryn also Kathryn1 there. I just was able to get out of the Joseph part of it when I got to blue sky. What else? Oh, give reviews. Write something, stars that all helps people find this podcast. You should check out some other podcasts, like Kathryn hosting the Jabot or me being a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. And then with all of that said, I think we are done for a while.

(00:30:00)

[Music]

I will see everybody next week for a massively fun deep dive into e-discovery news. I’m sure.

Kathryn Rubino: I’ll wait on that.

Joe Patrice: All right, bye, everybody.

Chris Williams: Peace.

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