New Trump Judicial Appointee

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...y_appears_to_have_defended_the_first_kkk.html

This was newsworthy in general due to the fact that this guy has never tried a case. He's done much more paranormal investigations than legal work and he was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association. Oh, and he failed to disclose that his wife worked for the White House. Those people have bad memories when filling out disclosure forms.

The newsworthy thing for this group is that he's a "quasi" avid poster on an Alabama message board. At least we know that kook's not working out of St. Petersberg.

The best and the brightest.....

 

I don't know enough about the early Klan to judge the merits of his post, and I won't defer to an obviously partisan Slate.com author. Furthermore, the failure to disclose was probably an oversight. can It's too obvious of a screw up for it to have been done with nefarious intentions. However I will say this. There's virtually nothing that a 36 year old could do to make himself qualified enough to be a federal district judge, especially a 36 year old who has never tried a case.

I listened to Ben Shapiro talk about this the other day, and his defense of Talley's lack of qualifications was pretty weak. He didn't think it was a big deal that Talley hasn't tried a case, because he was a "transactional lawyer" and said there's no reason why a judge has to have been a trial lawyer. I like Shapiro and think he's sharp, especially for a young guy, but he's full of crap.

A federal district judge's job is to preside over trials. That means he or she needs to have a mastery of federal rules of procedure, evidence, and trial practice. If you haven't demonstrated that mastery in real life, then you're not qualified. You might be a nice guy. You might be a smart guy. I've heard that Talley is both, but he's not qualified to be a federal district judge.

 

I wouldn't have even posted it but for the collegiate message board link. Made me laugh.

There are a lot of "innocent" failures to disclose these days. The kind that would get people in trouble in the past.

 

I'm not saying it's innocent. I'm just saying it probably was done more out of incompetence and sloppiness than out of an attempt to hide something. It would be pretty much impossible to get away with it.

 

The ABA is political, just so you know.
Also, lawyers who have tried (competently) complicated jury trials are getting rare these days.
I do agree that a federal judge ought to be picked from this dwindling pool, but to the average person, the most important ruling a federal judge will make is some BS injunction of a political statute or agency action—and who needs proper trial experience for that?

 

Yes, I know. The overwhelming majority of lawyers and law scholars who are involved with the ABA are staunch liberals, and I'm sure that does play into their judgments.

This is true. Litigation costs, the rise of binding arbitration, and the legislative and judicial restricting of causes of action are all making the jury trial less common. However, in the case of Talley, we're not even talking about complicated jury trials. He hasn't even tried a fender-bender in county court at law. I think we should at least be able to expect that before giving the guy a life tenured appointment to a job presiding over trials.

That's true, because the average person doesn't appear in a courtroom as a litigant or a lawyer. They just read headlines. I'm not the average person. People like us know what a judge's job actually is.

 

The appointment of a Supreme Court nominee is entirely political, so opinions from interest groups like the ABA shouldn't carry all that much weight. The same is largely true for appointments to the Courts of Appeals.

But District Court appointments are different. Politics are much less important at that level, because (1) the vast majority of their decisions are not political in nature and (2) everything they do that is political is subject to review by two layers of courts above. Plus, competence is much more important at the trial level. Appellate judges make a handful of decisions each week, so they have ample time to study and contemplate. Trial judges often make several dozen decisions in a single hour, so they have to be able to fly by the seat of their pants. There is no substitute for experience.

 

Everything you are saying is exactly on point, but as a point of reference, I have tried numerous federal jury trials and dozens of state court jury trials.

 

Don't you think that experience would make you better equipped to be a judge than someone with no courtroom experience?

 

Absolutely!
It’s absurd not to have trial experience.
I also think that the discipline of fairly overseeing disputes in which two sides have to be considered—during which the judge has to practice discernment as to which decisions have been committed to him or her versus the jury or parties—is what is needed for the political stuff, too.

When I said that the strongest effect a federal judge will have on an average person is to boss around a school or a prison or your bathroom or a voter ID law, it wasn’t because I like it that way.