Underneath Their Robes

A Quick Comment on Corrections

In her haste to issue posts, Article III Groupie frequently makes minor mistakes -- typographical errors, misspelled names, incorrect links, etc. Because A3G wants her blog to be as accurate as possible, she greatly appreciates corrections from her readers. Readers informed her, for example, of such recent mistakes as "Brandt Liebe" (correct spelling: "Brandt Leibe"), "Stephen Shackleford" (correct spelling: "Stephen Shackelford"), and the obvious error of "Leonard Hand" instead of "Learned Hand" (which A3G has turned into a humor opportunity).

Please note, however, that A3G frequently catches and corrects such errors sua sponte, often minutes after issuing her original post. So before you email A3G about a mistake in UTR, please make sure that you are looking at the most recent version of her post, by hitting the "refresh" button on your browser. (Being a bit of a technological ignoramus, A3G doesn't know how this works for those of you who subscribe to this blog's feed; if you can enlighten her, please post a comment.)

Thanks!!!

More Law Clerk Hiring News, and a Correction

One of the nice things about blogging is that you can correct erroneous items quickly and prominently. In Article III Groupie's most recent post about Supreme Court clerk hiring, she reported that Heath Tarbert would be clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas in October Term 2006. It appears that this item was incorrect; Mr. Tarbert will be clerking for Justice Thomas in October Term 2007, along with Carrie Severino.

Does this mean that there is still room in CT's RV for one more passenger in OT 2006? Or is there a Thomas clerk for OT 2006 that A3G has not yet learned about? If you have the scoop, please email A3G.

In other law clerk hiring news, Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog extends Goldstein & Howe's congratulations to Stephen Shackelford, who will be clerking for Justice Stephen G. Breyer (presumably in OT 2006). A3G had previously heard a rumor about Justice Breyer hiring a Fay Diploma winner currently clerking for Judge Michael Boudin. Perhaps this unidentified Boudin clerk and Mr. Shackelford -- a two-time winner of the Sears Prize -- are one and the same?

Also worth noting in the SCOTUSblog congratulations message: the news that Anton Metlitsky, previously hired by then-Judge John G. Roberts to clerk on the D.C. Circuit in 2005-06, has secured a clerkship with Big Pimpin' Feeder Judge Merrick Garland. A3G is willing to wager donuts to dollars* that Mr. Metlitsky, after his tenure as a Garlandista, will be reunited with JGR at One First Street (as she previously speculated).

A Garland clerkship followed by a Roberts clerkship is one helluva clerkship combo. But it's no match for what George Hicks, also hired to clerk for JGR on the D.C. Circuit, might end up with someday: a clerkship with Chief Justice Roberts, but preceded by a clerkship with Judge Janice Rogers Brown!!!

(As reported last month in UTR, George W. Hicks was dispatched to Judge Brown's chambers after then-Judge Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court. A3G would bet a large sum of money that George, like Anton, will also eventually clerk for JGR on the Supreme Court.)

In terms of prestige, a Garland-Roberts clerkship sequence is impossible to beat. But in terms of fabulosity, both clerkships combined are nothing compared to apprenticing at the elbow of the Uppity Black Diva. Ever since Judge Priscilla Owen was dethroned, stripped of her diva crown for being too shy and unassuming, Judge Brown has reigned as UTR's #1 Judicial Diva.

A3G previously declined to opine (see question #15) as to who would prevail in a judicial celebrity death match between Judge Richard Posner and Judge Alex Kozinski. But A3G can tell you this, with complete confidence: If Chief Justice John Roberts were ever to cross gavels with Judge Janice Rogers Brown -- an unlikely scenario, given their shared conservatism, but not inconceivable -- the Chief wouldn't stand a chance. Her Divaship would knock that Harvard pretty boy upside the head so fast, he'd lose three-quarters of his I.Q. points!

And then what would happen? We might start confusing him with Harriet Miers...

* Yes, A3G realizes that the saying is "dollars to donuts." But she's not talking about ordinary donuts; she's referring to Krispy Kremes!

No, you're right, A3G doesn't eat them that often -- they're not good for her girlish figure, and her culinary tastes generally run more highbrow than that. But when she does occasionally indulge her Krispy Kreme kraving, she always enjoys herself!

Amended Opinions: Maureen Mahoney IS Interested

... in serving on the Supreme Court, contrary to prior speculation from Article III Groupie.

[In case you're wondering, yes, A3G drafted most of this post prior to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court yesterday. So this post has been largely overtaken by events. But since it's a quasi-correction, A3G will run just to set the record straight, even though the world is now much less interested in Maureen E. Mahoney than it was before Monday morning.]

According to a credible source, "Maureen is definitely interested in SCOTUS, but thinks (rightly) that’s she’s being blackballed by the conservatives." Based on some of the hostility towards her that can be seen over at Confirm Them -- including the call for Mahoney to "serve some serious time" on a federal appeals court, atoning for Grutter -- it's hard to disagree with that conclusion.

As to why Maureen Mahoney turned down the chance to be appointed to a circuit court, even though she would love to serve on the Supreme Court, speculation abounds. According to one UTR source, "she really, really loves her job at [Latham & Watkins]. But there are jobs, and then there are JOBS..." According to another reader, Mahoney "was approached and asked whether she wanted a COA gig. [O]ne of the reasons that she rejected it was that the court was not going to be D.C. or 4th.... Note that G.H.W.B. nominated her to the E.D. Va. way back when, and she would have taken that spot if she had been confirmed."

In the week before President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, Maureen Mahoney -- a.k.a. "the female John Roberts" -- was generating significant buzz in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere as a possible SCOTUS candidate. See, e.g., ACSBlog; Captain's Quarters; Confidential Report; The Left Coaster. Commentators had lots of nice things to say about her impressive credentials. But, just as Chief Justice Roberts makes mistakes, Mahoney also isn't perfect, at least according to this UTR reader:

[Recently we] watched a cheaply produced video on appellate advocacy in my legal writing class. The video starred Maureen Mahoney and Brett Kavanaugh (and was produced at least 10 years ago I believe). Unfortunately I do not recall the title or the topic discussed. [Update: Please see the comments; there is some disagreement concerning the identity of Mahoney's adversary.]

What I do remember is that almost everyone in the class agreed that Kavanaugh was clearly a much better speaker and much more persuasive than Mahoney.... Perhaps it was a bad day for Mahoney, or perhaps Kavanaugh is just a superstar [A3G: he is], but I think based on that video there must be many female candidates much more deserving of the spot (at least if you are aiming to pick a “female Judge Roberts”).

A3G is intrigued to learn of some ancient videotape that fails to display the brilliant Maureen Mahoney to her best advantage. Today Mahoney is a legal celebrity, an A-list Supreme Court advocate with a stellar reputation. And yet, somewhere out there in the ether, a ten-year-old, "cheaply produced" video captures her engaging in... subpar oral advocacy. This whole incident reminds A3G of how, once a Hollywood actress starts hitting the big time, some awful soft-core porn video from the starlet's "ramen-noodle days" inevitably resurfaces, usually at a most inconvenient time for her burgeoning career -- when she's about to land her first leading role in a blockbuster movie, or her first Vanity Fair cover.

At 50, Maureen Mahoney is still young enough to be nominated to the Supreme Court if a vacancy materializes in the next ten years, which surely will happen (and sooner than one might expect if Harriet Miers isn't confirmed). So A3G has two pieces of advice for Ms. Mahoney: (1) hie thee to a circuit court, to start building a solid track record on the bench, and (2) find and destroy all copies of this incriminating videotape, as soon as possible!!!

Amended Opinions: Helen Souter, R.I.P.

It was technically accurate for Article III Groupie to report that "Justice David H. Souter no longer lives with his mother." Unfortuately, A3G was right for the wrong reason. On March 23, 1995, Justice Souter's mother, Helen Souter, passed away.

A3G lays the blame for her error upon the erroneous Souter bio of the Supreme Court Historical Society, which one would expect to be a reliable source of information about the justices. She would also note that even the omniscient Wonkette may be laboring under the same misapprehension (third item).

Here are some excerpts from an article about Helen Souter's passing, by Tami Plyler, which was published in the Manchester Union Leader on March 25, 1995:

Helen Souter, who once said "I think a teardrop fell," when she was told her only son, David Souter, was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, died Thursday in Concord. She was 87.

Mrs. Souter, who was once described by her son as an avid Red Sox fan, was a resident of Heritage Heights, a Concord retirement home. She had lived with her son at the family's Weare home until moving to Heritage Heights several years ago. The Supreme Court associate justice confirmed yesterday his mother died Thursday, but declined to give out funeral details, saying the services will be private.

The Boutwell & Hussey-Wiren Funeral Home in Concord was in charge of arrangements. Funeral director Ronald Bourque said Souter requested there be no obituary and said he would handle inquiries. "Justice Souter wants it to be very private," said Bourque....

The way that Justice Souter handled his mother's passing, without even issuing a formal obituary, may shed some light upon his reaction -- or lack thereof -- to the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist. It supports the theory that his failure to issue a statement after the Chief's death was simply a manifestation of his extreme, almost obsessive desire for privacy, as opposed to a reflection of any animosity Souter had towards Rehnquist. (Justice Souter's understated handling of his mother's death may also explain why many people are unaware that she passed away some years ago.)

The article goes on to note:

Prior to being confirmed a Supreme Court justice, Souter made weekly visits to his mother in Concord. The appointment to the Supreme Court meant her son wasn't able to make weekly visits anymore, something Mrs. Souter said she regretted, but apparently took in stride.

"Well, isn't that silly, but being a mother, I'd miss him if he went to Boston," said Mrs. Souter in 1990. At the time, Souter was a judge on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

When he was nominated to the Supreme Court, Mrs. Souter said she was proud of her son. "I'm a very happy mother," she said, adding, "I'm very happy that I produced a judge."

Indeed! As far as A3G is concerned, the second most noble job after being a federal judge is being the mother of a federal judge. The article concludes:

While Souter's mother wasn't entirely surprised by her Souter's nomination to the nation's highest court -- he had been on the short list for the post for some time -- she was somewhat skeptical when White House counsel C. Boyden Gray [OT 1968/Burger] called Mrs. Souter prior to the nomination looking for her son. Former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman said in 1990 that Mrs. Souter almost wouldn't give Gray the number, because she thought the call was a prank.

And when Justice Souter's made his first visit to the White House, the visit included a call by then-President George Bush to Mrs. Souter in Concord. As Justice Souter recounted in 1990, Bush told Mrs. Souter he had brought the justice nominee to the White House, settled him down and gave him a drink. "'I want you to know he's okay,"' Souter recalled, "'he's doing just fine."'

It sounds like Helen Souter was a truly wonderful woman, who loved her son very much and was deeply proud of his impressive accomplishments. May she rest in peace.

Amended Opinions: Justice Thomas DOES Care...

Article III Groupie has been revising and updating her last post, concerning the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote on the Roberts nomination, on an essentially constant basis since she issued it. Lots of readers have written A3G with helpful corrections and additions, which she has incorporated into the original post (including some new footnote material). (You can get the latest version of the post by hitting the "refresh" button on your web browser.)

The information that A3G is about to share, though, is really too good to be tacked on as an afterthought; it deserves to be highlighted in a separate post. In response to her speculation that Justice Clarence Thomas couldn't care less that he was confirmed by only a 52-48 margin, a reader wrote to A3G as follows:

[Justice Thomas] actually has a list of every senator and how they voted for him, with the ones that voted against him highlighted. [H]e enjoys showing it to clerks, and [he] goes on a rant about how horrible it was and that he'll never forget those senators' names.

Most interesting... The fact that CT actually keeps handy the Senate roll call on his SCOTUS confirmation vote is quite juicy. But A3G is not completely surprised to hear that Justice Thomas remains somewhat fixated on his 1991 confirmation fight. As she reported here (see item #7), Justice Thomas "enjoys talking about [his confirmation battle] around the Supreme Court building, like a veteran telling war stories, which might be surprising given its bitter and lurid nature."

A3G's advice to Justice Thomas: Let it go! While the treatment you were subjected to was certainly traumatic, it took place almost 15 years ago. You are now an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (with a lucrative book deal to boot). Your erstwhile nemesis, Anita Hill, is now a mere footnote in the annals of history -- on a par with, say, Monica Lewinsky...

So just get on with your (super-fabulous) life, Justice Thomas! Revel in your federal judicial celebrity; bask in the raves that your excellent Supreme Court opinions have justifiably earned for you. Attend lots of Federalist Society events, like Ted Olson's famous fete, and soak up the adoration of conservative judicial groupies. Put all the old ugliness behind you (with the help of a good therapist if necessary; A3G swears by hers). Remember: "He who laughs last, laughs best!"

Amended Opinions: Some Corrections from the Fifth Circuit

In this recent post, Article III Groupie followed the example of President Bush and paid a visit to the storm-ravaged Fifth Circuit. She reported on a number of Fifth Circuit judges; alas, some of her information was incorrect. Here are three quick corrections and additions (also reflected in changes made to the original post):

1. Math was never A3G's strong suit (which explains in part why she ended up in law school). Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham, who was born in 1938, is currently 66 and will be turning 67 in December. A3G knew that Judge Higginbotham was born in 1938, per his FJC bio; she just did the math wrong, which resulted in her erroneous prior report of his current age as 69.

2. A3G also passed along a rumor that Judge Fortunato P. Benavides might be relocating his chambers from Austin to Houston. A source close to Judge Benavides reports that he "has absolutely no intention" of making such a move. So, if you're a clerkship applicant interested in clerking for a federal judge based in the lively and livable city of Austin, you should definitely consider applying to the Honorable "Pete" Benavides.

3. Judge Benavides is very well-liked by his former clerks. The following rave is typical: "Judge Benavides takes an active interest in his clerks' lives, expects them to have a full life outside of chambers, and is unfailingly nice. As a boss, he allows his clerks to divvy up the cases amongst themselves, so they can work on ones that interest them most, and he takes the recommendations in their bench memos seriously, even when he does something different. Clerking for him was definitely a great experience."

A3G regrets the errors, and she thanks her readers for bringing these mistakes to her attention. She wants her blog to be as accurate as possible -- but she can't do it without your help!

A Roberts Adoption Addendum

Back in this post, Article III Groupie summarized and collected the mainstream news media's coverage concerning the two adopted children of our SCOTUS nominee, Judge John G. Roberts, and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts. A3G did this after it was rumored, on the Drudge Report, that the New York Times was looking into the Roberts' adoption records.

Out of a respect for the Roberts family's privacy -- yes, even A3G recognizes limits -- as well as a recognition that this topic is not germane to Judge Roberts's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court, A3G will not explore this topic any further. So if you're looking for speculation concerning the adoptions, you've come to the wrong place.

In the interest of completeness, however, A3G offers this brief "meta"-news update, concerning not the Roberts adoptions themselves, but the news media coverage of them. Here are answers to a few questions that you might have concerning the (somewhat controversial) Times investigation.

1. Is it true that the Times made inquiries into the Roberts' adoptions?

Yes; the Times confirmed it. In response to reader mail that it received in the wake of the rumors, the Times offered the following explanation:

Like all major news organizations, we report extensively on the life and career of any nominee or candidate for high public office. Most of the inquiries we make do not report in published articles at all; we would simply be remiss if we did not ask the questions.

In the case of Judge Roberts's family, our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue. We did not order up an investigation of the adoptions.

You can read the full letter here, via Michelle Malkin. (A3G doesn't mean to quibble, but an "investigation" could be viewed as a collection of "inquiries.")

2. What was the public reaction to the news that the Times was looking into the Roberts' adoptions?

The news was generally not well-received. See, e.g., this editorial; this editorial; this statement by the National Council for Adoption; this statement by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison; and this open letter (by Judge William W. Treat, a retired New Hampshire state court judge).

3. Did the "inquiries" into the Roberts' adoptions turn anything up?

No. According to the Times statement, "[w]e have not pursued the issue after the initial inquiries, which detected nothing irregular about the adoptions."

4. What prompted these inquiries?

According to The American Spectator, "[i]t was opposition research generated by pro-abortion group NARAL -- and distributed to Democratic operatives working against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John Roberts -- that spurred these operatives to encourage reporters in Washington to look into the Roberts' adoption process."

NARAL, of course, is the group responsible for the widely criticized, subsequently withdrawn television advertisement attempting to link Judge Roberts with bombers of abortion clinics. In the wake of the controversy over the Roberts attack ad, David E. Seldin, the NARAL communications director, resigned.

Amended Opinions: Updates and Corrections About Judge Roberts

In order to get it out for the morning after President Bush's big announcement, Article III Groupie* stayed up into the wee hours working on her detailed profile of Judge John G. Roberts, Jr., the President's nominee to the Supreme Court. The Roberts bio that A3G prepared took the form of a quiz for her readers, based largely on information she obtained from Judge Roberts's Senate questionnaire and financial disclosure forms (available as pdf files via Courting Influence).

Alas, in her haste to publish, A3G made some mistakes and omitted some relevant material from her bio of the #5 Superhottie of the Federal Judiciary. Ever the conscientious blogger, A3G went back and made various updates and corrections to Quiz Show: Judge John G. Roberts!!! So, if you read the post shortly after it first came out, you may wish to go back for another look.

For your information, here are some of the more notable revisions, many prompted by emails from her readers (to whom she owes much thanks for keeping her accurate and honest):

1. Question 3: A3G added more information about Judge Roberts's childhood and upbringing.

2. Question 5: A3G deleted the statement that Judge Roberts graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School. As noted by one reader in a comment to the post, "Roberts was not first in his HLS class; i.e., he did not win the Fay Diploma in 1979. Thomas P. Storer (now deceased, but he was a partner at Goodwin Procter in Boston) graduated first in the 1979 HLS class."

3. Question 5: A3G added a few more examples of former law clerks serving on the bench alongside the judges for whom they clerked. She also included an answer, courtesy of a super-helpful reader, to the question presented by puzzleblogger Kevin Choset of the Volokh Conspiracy.

4. Question 9: In the comments, one reader suggested: "Question 9 is misleading. [Roberts's] 2003 earning included his pay-out for his partnership interest when he left [Hogan & Hartson]." A3G has not verified this, but it sounds quite plausible to her.

5. Question 12: Article Three Groupie added lots of new material about Judge Roberts's wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, and the Roberts children, Josie and Jack.

Jane Roberts is rapidly turning into the subject of intense media scrutiny, largely due to her involvement with Feminists for Life, a pro-life organization. Tons of web traffic has been sent the way of Underneath Their Robes in the form of people running Google searches like "Jane Sullivan Roberts" or "jane roberts wife judge john roberts."

6. Question 14: After reading this article by Charles "Shattered Glass" Lane of the Washington Post, A3G corrected her erroneous prior report -- based on erroneous mainstream media reports -- that Judge Roberts is a card-carrying member of the Federalist Society.

7. Question 14: In response to A3G's query about Judge Roberts's golf handicap, a reader comment directed her to this article, in which Hogan & Hartson partner H. Christopher Bartolomucci described John Roberts as "an avid golfer who hasn't been able to spend much time on the course since adopting a son and a daughter about five years ago."

Article III Groupie thanks her readers for all of the great information, corrections, tidbits and leads that they've submitted to her by email (and she apologizes for her inability to respond to each message personally). She would also like to remind her readers of UTR's standard email policy, which provides that "anything that you email to [A3G] may be published in Underneath Their Robes, but on an anonymous basis. If A3G would like to attribute anything to you by name, she will obtain your consent prior to doing so."

So, if you have some juicy dish about Judge Roberts but are afraid of getting in trouble for blabbing, please -- don't hold back!** Share the scoop with A3G by sending her an email. She will keep your identity as one of her correspondents an absolute secret, ratting you out only if Plame-gate prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald shows up on her doorstep, wielding a subpoena and threatening to send her to jail. A3G doesn't do jail! But short of that drastic and extremely unlikely scenario, your identity is safe with A3G.

* Article Three Groupie has been incorrectly described in some accounts of her blog as a "federal judicial staffer," presumably based on a misreading of the one-line bio in her blogger profile page that describes her as a "federal judicial starf***er."

A3G hates to be crude, but the need for clarity has rendered it necessary. She is not a "federal judicial staffer" but a "federal judicial STARFUCKER," i.e., someone who has an unhealthy obsession with celebrity -- in this case, those celebrities of the legal world that we call federal judges.

** As you can probably tell from her prior posts, A3G is a huge fan of the Honorable John Roberts. She wants to see him confirmed to the Court, and she has no interest in scandalmongering with respect to him. Thus, her request for "juicy dish" about John Roberts should be construed to include the most innocuous pieces of information, such as where he does his grocery shopping, what he likes to wear under his robes, whether he enjoys ethnic food, and the types of movies he likes to watch.

Amended Opinions: Diva Dethroned!

In this very interesting post over at The Becker-Posner Blog, entitled "Blogging, Spam, and the Taxation of Internet Transactions," Judge Richard A. Posner offers the following comments in support of his view that there is "no pressing need for imposing ethical standards on bloggers":

The self-correcting machinery of the blogosphere is more efficient than the internal fact-checking departments of conventional media enterprises. This is not only because many more people... are watching out for mistakes; it is also because corrections are disseminated virtually instantaneously throughout the network. [W]hen the mainstream media catch mistakes, it may, especially in the case of the print media, take days or weeks to communicate a retraction to the public.

Article III Groupie couldn't agree more with Judge Posner. Indeed, her own blogospheric interactions with The Giant Hedgehog underscore this point. When A3G made a mistake in her reporting of Judge Posner's visit to Harvard Law School, Judge Posner brought the error to her attention in an email, and A3G promptly corrected the offending post.

As regular readers of UTR know, Article Three Groupie is constantly correcting herself (as she recently did with respect to her reports on the OT 2005 Supreme Court clerks). She would now like to amend her prior opinion of Justice Priscilla R. Owen, who could win Senate confirmation to the Fifth Circuit as early as today, in the wake of the eleventh-hour compromise that averted a filibuster showdown.

Article Three Groupie's overall opinion of Justice Owen has not changed: Priscilla R. Owen richly deserves a seat on the Fifth Circuit (and it looks like she will finally be getting one, knock on wood). But additional information about what Justice Owen is like as a person, which emerged during the non-stop news coverage about the filibuster controversy, call into question Justice Owen's entitlement to a far more important title: Queen of the Right-Wing Judicial Divas.

Perhaps buying into the left-wing propaganda about Priscilla Owen, Article III Groupie had imagined Justice Owen as a deliciously imperial female judge. Her conception of Justice Owen as magnificently high-handed, combined with Justice Owen's impressive credentials and above-average looks (by judicial standards), led A3G to name Priscilla Owen as UTR's top judicial diva. Justice Owen vanquished such worthy competitors as Justice Janice Rogers Brown, "The Uppity Black Diva," and Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl, "The California Dreamin' Diva."

Recent reports suggest, however, that Priscilla R. Owen has a softer side -- one that severely undermines her claim to judicial diva-dom. Consider the following, representative excerpts from articles and testimony about Justice Owen (A3G apologizes for the non-Bluebook-compliant citations, and she thanks How Appealing for most of the links):

1. Judge Seen as Conservative, Fair (David Savage, L.A. Times)

Pastor Jeff Black said most of the congregation [of Justice Owen's church] did not know Owen was a state supreme court justice until her nomination become a subject of national controversy.

"[Priscilla Owen] is very quiet and conscientious," said Black, who founded St. Barnabas the Encourager Evangelical Church in 1997. "She teaches Sunday school and is the head of our altar guild. Our people thought she was a nice, single lady who loves children, probably the most unlikely person to be the center of controversy."

2. Senate Floor Speech of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison

[Priscilla Owen] is a founding member of the St. Barnabas Episcopal Mission in Austin, Texas. She serves as head of the church's altar guild. And she teaches Sunday school to preschool, kindergarten, and grade school children. On any given Sunday, you can find Justice Owen hopping on one leg, reading stories, and helping these children find ways to make the right choices in their conduct.

3. In the Eye of the Storm: Priscilla Owen is an unlikely protagonist in the Senate's toxic showdown over judges (Debra Rosenberg and Tamara Lipper, Newsweek)

[Priscilla Owen] loathed the campaign trail. "She was miserable at it," says Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, who campaigned with her. Owen was so shy that she'd spend 15 minutes on a fund-raising call and never muster the nerve to ask for money.

Born in Palacios, Texas, she lost her father to polio when she was 10 months old. She grew up running cattle and working the rice fields of her family farm. Owen and [President] Bush shared a political consultant in [Karl] Rove and later inhabited the same Austin social circles. During quail season, Owen -- a talented chef -- would invite the Bushes and her fellow justices over for a feast of home-cooked game.

Owen's Texas friends hardly recognize the ominous figure in TV ads. To her clerks, she's "the Pro," a perfectionist judge who likes to draft her own opinions. To her Sunday-school students, she's "Miss Priscilla." For Owen, who's divorced, life revolves around work. "She has a kind of monastic commitment to it," says her pastor, the Rev. Jeff Black. She separates faith from work, says Black, who notes she was appalled by the religious right's recent "Justice Sunday" rally.

Owen's secure job as Supreme Court justice has helped her wait patiently. In the meantime, says pastor Black, Owen seems serene. "Just pray for God's will to be done -- pray for everyone on both sides," she tells him.

4. Priscilla Owen's Journey from Small Town to Center of Attention (Dave Montgomery, KRT Wire)

Her mother says they talk by phone nearly every day and frequently see each other on weekends when Owen drives the 90 miles to Waco.

"She's just a very normal, loving person," [Phyllis] Derrick said in a telephone interview. "She's not an extremist."

Owen, who is divorced and has no children, lives in northwest Austin with her mixed-breed dog, Annie, who was rescued from an animal shelter.

Friends describe Owen as somewhat shy, unassuming and perhaps a bit reclusive, though she is sometimes seen at public functions. She is an avid water skier and loves horseback riding. Her mother says her fantasy ambition is to live on a ranch.

5. Senate Showdown on Judges and Filibusters Begins to Unfold (David Stout and Carl Hulse, N.Y. Times)

Senator Patty Murray [D.-Wash.] said she had met with Justice Owen and found her to be "a lovely person."

"Nice," "quiet," "shy," "unassuming," and -- worst of all -- "a lovely person"? What self-respecting judicial diva would ever earn such epithets? If a senatrix from the opposite political party calls you "a lovely person," you're definitely doing something wrong.

Based on the foregoing observations, Justice Priscilla R. Owen appears to be more drab than delicious. She is a superb jurist, and she will be a fine addition to the Fifth Circuit. But her low-key personality prevents her from being a judicial diva of the first rank.

Indeed, Justice Owen seems incapable of even playing the part of judicial diva. Take a look at practically any photograph taken of her (such as the one at right, by Doug Mills for the New York Times; proposed caption: "What, me, a judicial diva?"). Justice Owen carries herself stiffly; she looks awkward and uncomfortable in front of the cameras. She lacks the ease, poise and confidence of a true judicial diva. There is no swish to her robes.

The Fifth Circuit has 17 authorized judgeships, and after a four-year struggle, it looks like Justice Owen will finally lay her claim to one of them. But there can be only one Queen of the Right-Wing Judicial Divas -- and this title, sadly enough, must now be stripped from Justice Owen.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown, congratulations! Regardless of whether Bo Bice or Carrie Underwood prevails tonight, when it comes to judicial diva-hood, you are the American Idol!

P.S. Article III Groupie's profile of Justice Breyer's clerks is coming "soon" -- before the upcoming holiday weekend.

Amended Opinions: More Corrections About The Elect

As you know, Article III Groupie has been constantly revising her posts profiling the Supreme Court clerks for October Term 2005, in some cases well after the original post was published. Many of these after-the-fact revisions have been prompted by comments from OT 2005 clerks or their friends, family, and co-workers, raising questions or concerns about various items. For the most part, A3G has been more than happy to make the requested changes.

But A3G does a few points to make to The Elect (if you will permit her to address her superiors):

1. People, relax! Let's not take ourselves too seriously. A3G is simply engaging in a little good-natured fun with these silly little profiles, which no one reads anyway. Lighten up, okay?

2. To the extent that you don't want to be publicly identified -- for some completely unfathomable reason (this is America, where there's no such thing as bad publicity, and everyone wants their fifteen minutes) -- well, it was only a matter of time before you were unmasked as one of the Elect. The Supreme Court's public information office will release its official list of law clerks at some point in the next few months, and copious coverage in the mainstream news media will follow shortly thereafter. If you have a problem with being mentioned in this wee blog, just wait until your name shows up in a piece by the Liz Smith of One First Street for Law.com, or even USA Today...

3. To the extent that you object to the handful of A3G's comments that are snarky, please keep in mind that ninety percent of the time, A3G is a font of loving adoration, the epitome of sweetness and light. Can't she be snarky for 10 percent of the time? (You people don't pay her enough to forego snark completely!)

4. At the end of the day, no matter what A3G writes about you, you are still a Supreme Court clerk -- and she is still one of the Great Unwashed, a miserable and bitter nobody, up to her ears in boxes of documents to review.*

5. At the end of the day, Underneath Their Robes is just a blog. What's a blog? A blog is a repository for the self-indulgent, semi-coherent ramblings of a pajama-clad loser -- here, A3G -- which nobody reads except the aforementioned loser. A blog has no editorial oversight, which is why bloggers can fill their blogs with meaningless text, e.g., "dskfla;sdkfjs," and nonsensical Gwen Stefani lyrics. So why should you care what some stupid person is writing about you, on some stupid blawg that nobody reads?

Despite the cosmic insignificance of her project, the former law review editor in A3G does want to get things right. Towards that end, she has made numerous small additions and alterations to her prior posts that she has not brought to the attention of her readership. But a handful of corrections are of such critical importance that they must be highlighted separately. So here are the latest UTR corrections and clarifications, for filing under "Amended Opinions":

1. In her post about Justice Kennedy's clerks, A3G mentioned that Randy Kozel "has a bobblehead doll of Bucky the Badger [sic], the Wisconsin mascot, whom he consulted frequently when selecting articles for the Harvard Law Review."

A3G has fixed that post, in light of the following correction: "As a Wisconsin girl myself, I have to correct you on one thing -- it's not Bucky THE Badger, it's just Bucky Badger. Love the blog."

2. It looks like A3G should steer clear of sports completely. In an earlier version of the AMK clerks post, she reported that Randy Kozel threw "the winning touchdown in the 2002 Harvard Law Review/Yale Law Journal football game," which was "caught by Henry Whitaker, a 2003 HLS grad and Sentelletubby who is currently clerking for Justice Thomas." These comments were in error, and A3G received multiple emails about them, from both Harvard and Yale partisans.** Here are two examples:

(a) "Your Randy Kozel/HLR-YLJ football info is inaccurate. Kozel threw the winning TD in the HLR-Legal Aid Bureau matchup, a grudge match if there ever was one.... The HLR-YLJ journal football game was NOT EVEN CLOSE that year; Harvard of course dominated."

(b) "You're giving the Yale Law Journal short shrift in this competition. Sure, Yale lost the 2002 game, but won the the 2003 one -- the first that YLJ has won in years, if not ever. Yale also does alright Elect-wise:  the winning '03 YLJ team was captained by Jon Kravis (clerking for Breyer in OT05), while the losing '02 YLJ team was captained by Jake Sullivan (clerking for Breyer now)."

Well! A3G stands corrected. And for those of you who are interested in the football field exploits of a bunch of overweight, pasty-faced, bespectacled law review editors,*** you're in luck. A3G's forthcoming post about Justice Breyer's OT 2005 clerks will relate the inspirational tale, ready for a made-for-TV movie, about how coach Jonathan Kravis -- with the help of a guest appearance by a certain Big Pimpin' Feeder Judge -- turned the losing YLJ team around, after years and years of defeat.

3. Gosh, A3G can't get anything right about Randy Kozel! In the original version of the same post, A3G stated upon information and belief that Randy Kozel, who was hired in January 2004, was the first law clerk hired for OT 2005. She has since deleted that apparently erroneous statement, based on a tip that incoming SOC clerk Ben Horwich interviewed with Justice O'Connor in December 2003, when she was filling her last OT 2004 slot, and wound up with an OT 2005 clerkship in mid-December of 2003. A3G regrets the error.

4. Speaking of Justice O'Connor's clerks, in her post about the SOC clerks, A3G observed that when a Supreme Court justice retires after hiring clerks for the following term, "there is a longstanding tradition of the remaining justices making a strong effort to pick up the hires of their departing colleagues. For example, as recounted here, Judge Kozinski was hired by Chief Justice Burger after Justice Douglas announced his retirement (even though Burger and Douglas weren't exactly ideological soulmates)."

The foregoing observation may have given readers the erroneous impression of a causal relationship between Judge Kozinski's being left in the lurch by Justice Douglas and then getting hired by Chief Justice Burger. None other than Judge Alex Kozinski himself wrote A3G, with this (very interesting) clarification:

[T]he reference to my having been picked up by CJ Burger after Justice Douglas retired is true only in the chronological sense. I got the call that Douglas hired me as his clerk one morning about 11 am, then got a call later the same day telling me the justice had just retired. (I don't comment as to cause and effect.) At that point I was out of a job, but still had applications pending with CJ Burger and Justice White. I got interviewed by White, but didn't get the job. I then got interviewed by Burger's selection committee, along with about 3 dozen other people.

The only difference the Douglas clerkship seems to have made is that I got a second interview, with another member of the committee, who spent the better part of an hour exploring the question: "Do you think someone who was picked as a clerk by Justice Douglas can possibly serve CJ Burger?" I answered: "I suspect I would disagree with CJ Burger about as often as with Justice Douglas."

All told, it was a trade up. Justice Douglas was, according to all who knew him, very difficult to work for, while CJ Burger was a prince. In fact, I never heard him speak ill or complain about anybody, ever.

At the end of my clerkship, my wife and I were married in the Justices' conference room -- not one of the large semi-public conference rooms known as the East and West conference rooms, but where the justices meet to decide cases. My wife reminds me occasionally that if either of us ever wants a divorce we'll have to petition for cert. ;-)

Wow! Running corrections is fun! Much of this delectable correction was news to A3G, but not all of it. Here are some excerpts from an earlier email exchange between A3G and Sasha Volokh, current Kozinski clerk and incoming SOC clerk:

A3G: I'm a little confused re: your "marriage" to quare.blogspot.com; can you unpack the joke a little for me?

Sasha: No joke: My former fiancee, Hanah Metchis, who used to blog at quare.blogspot.com, is now my wife, Hanah Metchis Volokh. As I mentioned, Judge Kozinski married us in a tasteful, minute-long, five-line ceremony (two of those lines, spoken by us, were "I do"), in his office last October.

A3G: Are you serious??? You didn't have a more elaborate ceremony, a la the spectacular nuptials of the Engels? I can't believe it.

Sasha: That's not elaborate? At 10 guests (3 of her family, 4 of mine, 2 co-clerks, and a random former clerk who was visiting chambers that day), my wedding was substantially larger than the judge's own wedding, which had only 6 guests, none of them family. (The judge's wedding, on the other hand, was more Elect, since he was married in the Supreme Court's conference room and the guests were the Burgers, the Starrs, and his co-clerk and co-clerk's wife.)

My bride is as yet neither a lawyer nor Elect, but she's starting at Georgetown Law this fall and now blogs at Purr Se, which is partly about the law and partly about our cats, Maggie and Ethelwolf.

Excellent! And with that, Article 3 Groupie has fulfilled her past promise of "[a]dditional information about Sasha's celebrity wedding, as well as some fun facts about the wedding of his boss," Judge Kozinski.

5. In her post about Justice Ginsburg's clerks, A3G quoted a reader who said, with respect to Joshua Civin, that "some might call him humorless," but he has been "known to chuckle on occasion."

Before offering her quasi-correction, A3G must make the following observations: (a) this comment represented the view of a reader about Josh, not the view of A3G (who doesn't know him from Adam); (b) the reader didn't say that Josh was humorless, but simply said that "some might call him humorless" (emphasis added); and (c) to the contrary, the reader indicated that Josh does have a sense of humor, as evidenced by his intermittent chuckling.

That being said, A3G has a quasi-correction to offer. In the interest of fairness and editorial balance, A3G will now reprint a message received from a reader who viewed the comment in question as failing to do justice to Mr. Civin's robust comedic sensibility, as demonstrated in the following anecdote:

While at some boys' prep school in Baltimore, Josh Civin and his yearbook cronies incurred no small amount of administrative wrath when they proposed as their yearbook theme the act of "sawing," a not-so-veiled metaphor for a pastime known and perpetrated by men in adolescence and beyond. Naughty little imps!

6. Also in the post about the RBG clerks, A3G compared the peripatetic Anna-Rose Mathieson to Carmen Sandiego. But a reader just wrote A3G with this tip:

Oh, A3G, you matched the wrong clerk to Carmen Sandiego!! Lori Alvino once told me that she appeared on the PBS show 'Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego' when she was a kid. I'm not sure if this can be verified on Google, but you could try to verify it with her.

How fun! If accurate, this is a delightful little tidbit. If you can provide confirmation or corroboration, please append a comment to this post. Much thanks!

Reversed and remanded, but not bench-slapped,

Article Three Groupie

* Yes, A3G has junior associate minions who do the "first cut" document review. But she has to look at what they cull out for her -- which still amounts to a lot, especially since the minions have no confidence in their own judgment and are overinclusive in what they show to her.

** A3G can't help but be amused by her correspondents' emotional investment in what was probably a rather mediocre football game, played by people more famous for their prowess with a Bluebook than with a pigskin.

Before you erstwhile editors email A3G to protest that you really are good at football -- despite being an alum of the Harvard Law Review or the Yale Law Journal, neither of which is a bastion of football talent -- A3G has a preemptive comment to make. She will retract this item, but only if you are as good a football player as Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. (E.D. Cal.), her next Questions Presented interviewee. (By the way, A3G is now formulating her first round of questions for Judge England; please email her with suggested topics or queries.)

*** A3G acknowledges that Randy Kozel is super-hunky. Indeed, she extends to him the same offer she made to the Scalia clerks. But A3G has a sneaking suspicion that not every male editor of the Harvard Law Review or the Yale Law Journal editor is quite as good-looking as Mr. Kozel...