Supreme Ambitions (7 page)

“Hello! And aren't you a lovely creature?”

The voice, bearing a heavy Eastern European accent, came from a short, plump man with gray hair.

“Hello,” I said. “I'm Audrey Coyne, and this is my co-clerk, James Hogan. We're clerking for Judge Stinson.”

“Of course you are! A beautiful clerk for a beautiful judge. I'm Frank Polanski.”

So
this
was the legendary Frank Polanski—the brilliant, difficult, colorful Frank Polanski. A huge feeder judge to the Supreme Court, as well as a possible Supreme Court justice himself.

“It's an honor to meet you, Judge Polanski,” I said.

“And it's a pleasure to meet you, flower of my heart.”

Flower of my heart? A beautiful clerk for a beautiful judge? These weren't things you'd expect a federal judge to say to someone he was meeting for the first time—which was part of his undeniable charm.

As we ate our salads, I chatted with Judge Polanski. He was funny, engaging, and focused; I was impressed by his attentiveness, especially given his prominence and power. James, meanwhile, spoke with two law clerks who had flown down from Alaska for the orientation. The other judge at our table was a senior judge from Seattle who looked ancient, seemed hard of hearing, and rarely opened his mouth (not counting a few burps).

Conversation subsided when the entrees arrived, which was also when the panel discussion began. As a Ninth Circuit obsessive, I found the back-and-forth to be a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the workings of the court. The panelists—including Judge Gottlieb, Jeremy's boss—were surprisingly candid and entertaining.

“Audrey, I enjoyed meeting you,” Judge Polanski said at the end of dinner. “I look forward to seeing you back in Pasadena.”

“Judge Polanski, the pleasure was all mine,” I said, smiling as sweetly as I could.

“Feel free to stop by and say hello,” he said. “As you may have heard, I don't get out much.”

“I know where to find you, Judge,” I said, sounding vaguely flirtatious. “I'm sure our paths will cross in the future. And I'd like to meet your clerks sometime too.”

“I'm going to hold you to that. I have a feeling this won't be our last interaction.”

And with a wink and a smile, the great Frank Polanski vanished into the night.

The law clerk orientation ended on Thursday night, and I returned to Pasadena on Friday morning. I would have wanted to spend the rest of the weekend in San Francisco, taking in the city and seeing friends, but I had too much work—especially since we had lost several days to the orientation, counting travel time. Our bench memos were due that Monday, the start of a review week, when we would sit down with the judge and orally review with her the different cases to be argued in court the week after that, during the calendar week—my first calendar with the judge.

I worked on both Saturday and Sunday. As usual, Amit and James toiled alongside me, and Larry was nowhere to be found. I worked until midnight on Saturday night, returned to chambers at eight on Sunday morning, and worked until seven that night, which is when I finished writing and editing my last bench memo and binding up my last bench book. (Some judges had made the move to electronic bench books, loading all the case documents on their iPads, but Judge Stinson hadn't made the jump yet.)

Sunday night had turned into my “free” night, when I allowed myself to see the world beyond chambers. It worked well as an evening for socializing, as long as I avoided excessive alcohol.

I had plans to meet up for dinner with Harvetta at El Cholo. This was our first significant interaction since meeting at the pool; we'd seen each other around the apartment complex from time to time, but not all that often, mainly due to how little time I spent at home.

“So tell me about yourself,” I said, taking a sip from my margarita. “You're definitely not the average law clerk.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I realized they could be misinterpreted.

“Excuse me?” asked Harvetta, arching her right eyebrow and holding a guacamole-laden chip in midair. “What do you mean by
that?
”

“I'm sorry—what I was trying to say was …”

“You know what? You're right. As a black woman, I'm definitely
not
the average law clerk. Did you meet any black women at your fancy-ass Ninth Circuit clerk orientation?”

“One, I think? From Nevada?”

“And any black men?”

“Not that I can recall …”

“So with more than 100 clerks, one is a sister, and no brothers,” she said, shaking her head and loading up another chip with an obscene amount of guac. “Damn, even worse than I thought.”

“How about in Justice Lin's chambers?”

“Fifty percent black chicks! Just me and my co-clerk, who's a white guy. But a lot of the staff attorneys up in San Francisco are minorities or women. Here in state court, we got more diversity going on than you guys in federal court, where everything is lily white.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to get us on a tangent about law clerk diversity. Where are you from? Where did you grow up?”

Harvetta paused to take a hearty swig from her margarita.

“I'm a California girl, born and bred. Grew up in Sacramento. Raised by my mom. Parents never married. Mama and I were poor as shit. Dad had money, but he never sent any our way.”

“What did your dad do? Was he a lawyer?”

“Hell no! But he
had
lawyers, lots of lawyers, over the years. He was a drug dealer—the biggest in Sacramento, until the feds busted his ass and shipped him away for 25 years.”

“Sorry to hear that. Was he in prison while you were growing up?”

“Naw, he got busted only a few years back. He had a fucking bad-ass
defense lawyer who got him off a bunch of times before the feds finally got him.”

“How do you feel about him?”

“Selfish asshole. Treated my mom and me like shit. I don't talk to him. He gave me nothing—except for this,” she said, tapping her temple.

I looked at her quizzically. I would have asked her to explain, but I was in the middle of chewing, savoring a small chip with a dollop of guacamole.

“My brains,” Harvetta said. “He was a deadbeat dad and a no-good motherfucker, but smart as shit—savvy, shrewd, strategic. That's how he was able to rise to the top of the Sacramento drug scene. And stay there. And avoid getting busted. At his peak he was grossing more than a million a year. I got my brains from my dad. That shit is genetic.”

“And what brought you to law school? Do you want to become a defense lawyer?”

“Fuck no! A lot of those defense attorneys are scum. Like their clients. Like my dad. I want to be a prosecutor. And put people like my dad in prison. That's why I went to law school.”

“You aren't opposed to the war on drugs?”

“Nope. I've seen up close the damage drugs can do to communities, families. My mom was an addict, that's how she met my dad. I am tough on crime. I am pretty conservative, actually, on a lot of issues.”

“A conservative African American woman. You are unusual, Harvetta Chambers.”

“You can say a lot of shit about me, but I ain't boring!”

“If you're conservative, why are you clerking for a liberal like Justice Lin?”

“Usually judges like clerks who think like them—yes men and ass kissers. Not Lin. He wanted to find someone crazy smart who disagrees with him on a lot of issues. Someone able to challenge him, to find holes in his arguments, to make his opinions stronger. Someone like
moi
.”

Harvetta laughed triumphantly, and I couldn't help joining her infectious laughter.

“And how did you decide on McGeorge for law school?”

“I loved McGeorge, but how I got there—well, McGeorge was the only law school I knew about. It was where my dad's defense lawyer went, and he was a great lawyer. And I didn't know of other options. The pre-law advisors at CSU Sacramento aren't worth shit.”

“What do you mean?”

Harvetta sat up in her chair and cleared her throat.

“They failed to advise me,” she said, shifting into her newscaster voice, “that an African American woman with a 4.0 undergraduate GPA and a score of 175 on the LSAT could win admission to practically any law school in the country.”

My jaw dropped. Did Harvetta have better numbers than I did?

“Those stats are incredible, Harvetta. You could have gone anywhere.”

“Like I said, I got my father's smarts. And it all worked out in the end. McGeorge gave me a full ride, all three years. I got to stay in Sacramento and take care of Mama. I kicked ass in law school—graduated with the highest GPA in McGeorge's history. And now I'm here, so it's all good.”

“Did you apply for clerkships with any federal judges?”

“Federal clerkships, that shit goes down in third year of law school, with that hiring plan. But for me that was when Mama was dying. Between taking care of Mama, keeping up my grades, and running the law review, I didn't have time to deal with that crap.”

“I'm sorry to hear about your mother.”

“Thanks. But yeah, well, she fucked herself up good with all the shit she did—she coulda died even earlier. Mama passed in January. Before she died, I was gonna go back to Latham & Watkins to make mad bank so I could help her out. After she died, I said fuck it—I love the law, and I wanna clerk. By then it was too late to apply to most judges. But one of my profs connected me with Sherwin Lin, who got on to the California Supreme Court after his Ninth Circuit thing blew up, and who was looking for clerks. He interviewed the Harvetta”—here she paused to point her two thumbs at her ample bosom—“and the rest is history.”

Her gestures made me think of hands on a steering wheel.

“So you grew up in California,” I said. “Does that mean you know how to drive?”

“What the fuck kinda question is that? Who
doesn't
know how to drive?”

I smiled sheepishly.

“What? Girl, you don't know how to drive? Guess they don't teach that at Harvard and Yale!”

Harvetta cackled. I laughed too.

“I'm from New York, where a lot of us don't know how to drive because mass transit is so good,” I explained. “But now that I'm out here, I'm stuck either walking or taking a cab. I like Pervez, the cab driver I always call, but it gets expensive. So I'm thinking of learning to drive. Can you teach me?”

“I sure can,” Harvetta said. “I'm a pretty awesome driver, actually. But can I ask you for a favor?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I'm applying for some stuff for after my clerkship with Lin. Could you take a look at my résumé?”

“I'd be happy to. So you're not going back to Latham & Watkins?”

“Oh, I might, I loved being a summer associate there,” said Harvetta, polishing off the last of the chips and guac. “But I want to explore all my options.”

“That makes sense. A lot of law firms are interested in recruiting people out of clerkships.”

“I'm actually more interested in … other government stuff. But maybe I'll talk to some firms too. It's like my daddy used to say: always know your value on the street.”

Shortly after 1 o'clock on Monday afternoon, Brenda stuck her head into my office.

“Audrey,” she said, “the judge is ready to review your Monday cases with you.”

I thanked Brenda, grabbed a yellow legal pad and a pen, and walked across chambers toward the judge's private office. This was Monday afternoon of “review week,” the week before the week of oral arguments. On the Monday of review week, the judge would sit down with each of the clerks, one-on-one, and discuss with us the cases for the Monday of calendar week. On the Tuesday of review week, she would review with us the cases for the Tuesday of calendar week, and so forth and so on.

As I approached the open doorway, I felt the same nervous energy I felt when I entered her office for my clerkship interview or the first Monday morning meeting. I would be spending significant one-on-one time with Judge Stinson. Although I had been on the job for several weeks, the judge preferred to interact with us through written memos, so I had had fairly limited face-to-face interaction with her on issues of substantive law. This was another opportunity to impress her—or to reveal myself as inadequate and ill-prepared.

I knocked softly on the doorframe with my right hand.

“Judge, Brenda said you were ready to review my Monday cases with me?”

Judge Stinson looked up from the brief she was reading and marked
where she stopped with a red post-it flag.

“Yes, please come in,” she said, gesturing for me to sit down next to her. She was seated at the head of the marble-topped conference table and directed me toward the seat to her right.

The judge had the bench books for my Monday cases in a neat stack in front of her. As soon as I sat down, we began going through them, case by case. Each review began with me providing a short summary of the facts, identifying the key legal issues, and summarizing the recommendations in my bench memo. The judge would then ask me a few questions about each case, some to confirm her own recollections and some to probe or clarify particular issues. Nothing she asked managed to stump me; her questions were simple, straightforward, and driven by the contents of the briefs and the bench memos. Part of me was relieved by my ability to field all her questions with ease; part of me was slightly disappointed that she didn't ask more challenging questions or have more unusual or interesting takes on the cases. But then I thought to myself: Judge Stinson wouldn't enjoy such an excellent reputation, and wouldn't be mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee, if she were anything short of brilliant. And being a judge, unlike being a law professor, isn't about having an “unusual” or “interesting” view of the law; it's about getting the law right and applying it faithfully to the facts.

At the end of the session, we reached
Hamadani
, the case I had struggled with the most.

“Ahmed Hamadani petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed an immigration judge's denial of his application for asylum,” I recited. “Hamadani is a Pakistani journalist who came to the United States on a journalism fellowship and now seeks political asylum here. He claims that his advocacy of greater autonomy for his home province of Baluchistan would cause him to be persecuted if he is deported to Pakistan.”

“And what is your recommendation in this case?”

“This is a difficult case. Hamadani cites extensive evidence showing that Baluchistan freedom advocates have been imprisoned, tortured,
and even killed. One of his former bosses, the managing editor of the newspaper Hamadani worked at, was arrested on questionable charges. A writer whose articles Hamadani edited at the paper was shot in broad daylight.”

“But it's not certain that the murder was politically motivated,” Judge Stinson said. “It may have been due to a squabble over a business deal gone bad. Am I remembering that correctly?”

“Yes, Judge. But these are just a few examples of the persecution faced by Baluchistan nationalists like Hamadani.”

“As I also recall, the immigration judge—the fact-finder in this case, entitled to deference—also found inconsistencies in Hamadani's written asylum application and oral testimony?”

“True. But Hamadani does offer explanations for the alleged inconsistencies. In the end, based largely on the inconsistencies, I recommend affirming the BIA's denial of asylum. But I'm not certain about that conclusion. This case could go either way.”

“You made the correct call. I do not view this case as particularly difficult.”

“You don't?”

“There are so many immigrants out there who just want to stay in the United States because, quite honestly, life is better here. They don't want to go back to whatever hellhole they came from—and I don't blame them. But we can't just go around giving out political asylum like Halloween candy. Here's my rule of thumb for immigration cases: when in doubt, the immigrant loses.”

The judge chuckled. I froze. Was I supposed to laugh? My general rule was to laugh at judicial jokes, but immigration cases involved people's lives, families, and futures. Was laughter appropriate?

“I should clarify that,” said the judge, perhaps detecting my discomfort. “As you know from your research, the legal standard for asylum is demanding. The burden of establishing entitlement to asylum lies with the petitioner, not the government. If ‘substantial evidence' supports the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, we must affirm—and
‘substantial evidence' is a low bar, lower than a preponderance of the evidence, far lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. So that's why I believe, to take a complex area of law and reduce it to something simple, that a ‘tie' goes to the government.”

“That makes sense to me, Judge,” I said, nodding. Her clarification comforted me.

“Being a judge—and, by extension, being a clerk—can be difficult. Ahmed Hamadani sounds like a good man who is doing good work. He is very sympathetic. I have great sympathy for him. I'm the daughter of an immigrant—my father came here from China, smuggled here illegally. I'm very sympathetic to immigrants.”

Here she paused, leaned in, and placed her right hand on my left wrist.

“But we can't decide cases based on sympathy, Audrey. We must decide them based on the law.”

“Absolutely, Judge Stinson.”

“And as a summary and analysis of the governing law, your bench memo was impressive—thorough, careful, and fair. You and Amit are doing superb work so far. Please tell him that I'm ready to review his cases with him.”

I left Judge Stinson's office in an excited state. The review session had gone well, and the judge found my bench memo to be “impressive.” Excellent.

Less excellent: the competition posed by Amit for the favor of Judge Stinson. I'd have to figure out what to do about that.