Sonia Sotomayor has gained admission to the Marble Palace. Now she has to figure out how the US Supreme Court works.
When do you speak up? How do you find your way around a building torn apart by renovation? If someone knocks at the door while the justices are meeting in their private conference room, who answers? (Note to the newest justice: You do.)
After 17 years as a federal judge, Sotomayor knows her way around a courthouse. But her new workplace, filled with quirky customs and rituals, isn’t any old court building and new justices, like new colleagues everywhere, want to fit in.
“You don’t necessarily want to break the china when you start out,” said Christopher Landau, who served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas after his tumultuous confirmation in 1991.
Sotomayor, 55, will be the court’s first Hispanic and third woman, after she completes the formalities of taking an oath of office and signing relevant paperwork. The most significant demographic fact about her now is that she will be the junior justice.
Other than opening the conference room door, Sotomayor will be responsible for taking notes on what the justices decide at those private meetings — including the conference late next month where they dispose of a couple thousand appeals — and then reporting the decisions accurately to the court clerk.
It’s not rocket science, but it is vital to the court.
“She’ll be keeping track of what goes on at conference as she’s trying to figure out what’s going on at conference,” said Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor who worked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Ginsburg’s first term in 1993 and 1994.
Sotomayor also will go last when the justices take initial votes on cases. Ginsburg once recalled “a certain impatience, a high premium on brevity when the vote came round to me and there was already a lopsided majority. But coming last does have its heady moments, times when the ninth vote breaks a tie.”
The court renovation will force Sotomayor into temporary offices and delay getting her permanent location until the construction is done late next year
Justice Samuel Alito once told an interviewer he often got lost in his first months because of the construction.
“I didn’t know where anything was, how to get in or how to get out,” Alito said.
Sotomayor will have plenty of help — a couple of secretaries, a messenger and four law clerks. If she followed past practice, those clerks already have been hired or have an understanding they will be.
Some new justices have hired at least one law clerk who previously worked at the Supreme Court because it is “easier to get up to speed more quickly,” Justice Thomas wrote in his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son.
Deanne Maynard, a partner at the Morrison and Foerster law firm who worked for Justice Stephen Breyer, said an experienced clerk is useful in explaining the court’s customs to new justices.
“If you want to join an opinion, but you really wish perhaps they might modify part of it slightly, what’s the norm in the court?” Maynard said.
The new justice also often reaches out to the others. Thomas wrote about meeting with his eight colleagues, as well as the man he replaced, Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of