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I hope all of the moms among you had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Our family had a lovely time celebrating with my mother and mother-in-law over brunch yesterday.
The highlight of last week for me was an event on Wednesday morning, a breakfast panel that I moderated about Biglaw firms moving into plaintiff-side and contingency litigation. Hosted by Burford Capital (a longtime sponsor of OJ), it featured two leading litigators, Eva Cole of Winston & Strawn and Avi Weitzman of Paul Hastings, and Burford’s own Evan Meyerson. The discussion was excellent, as I knew it would be—and the attendance was robust, which was a relief. (Whenever I’m involved with a live event, I never believe people will actually show up, until they do.)
In a prior edition of Judicial Notice, I alluded to some minor health issues. Thanks to those of you who reached out to express concern—but fear not, they’re quite minor. And they’re being addressed: I found an endodontist to deal with my root canal retreatment, as well as a physical therapist to help me with my Achilles tendonitis.
Now, on to the news. As usual when I publish Judicial Notice on Monday morning, this roundup covers news through Sunday, May 10; subsequent developments will appear in the next edition of JN.
Lawyer of the Week: Neal Katyal.
Since Wednesday night, everyone has been talking about acclaimed Supreme Court advocate Neal Katyal, a former acting U.S. solicitor general and current partner at Milbank. Why? Because of a tweet and subsequent TED Talk, discussing how he harnessed the power of Harvey to win the Supreme Court tariffs case, which were poorly received—for reasons I covered in my story from yesterday.
Despite my overall admiration for Katyal, I opined that his tweet and TED Talk were ill-advised, and it appears I’m not alone. In a reader poll, around 70% of you expressed a “very negative” or “negative” view of his tweet and TED Talk, with only 15% on the positive side. But if you haven’t done so already, check out my post and read the substantive, thoughtful statement that Katyal shared with me, explaining the message he wanted to convey in his tweet and talk. What he was trying to communicate was entirely sensible, even wise; the execution just left something to be desired.
Other lawyers in the news:
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In remarks made last month at a private club in Washington, D.C., former special counsel Jack Smith criticized the U.S. Department of Justice under Donald Trump, alleging that the DOJ had been “corrupted” by Trump loyalists.
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After he argues in defense of the Trump administration’s executive orders against four Biglaw firms, before the D.C. Circuit this coming Thursday, Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli will depart from the DOJ (for an unknown position in the private sector).
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Reflecting the Justice Department’s challenges in attracting and retaining talent, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate announced retention bonuses for lawyers willing to stick it out at the Civil Division—as well as $25,000 signing bonuses for lawyers willing to join certain (especially controversial) sections of the Civil Division, such as ones focused on investigating youth transgender treatments and advancing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is also paying out retention bonuses, in the range of roughly $5,000 to $7,000, to federal prosecutors in D.C.
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Kevin Bolan, who leads the Civil Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island, is being investigated by a special counsel, Professor Niki Kuckes. Bolan reportedly failed to inform Judge Melissa DuBose that an undocumented immigrant was wanted for homicide in the Dominican Republic—and after Judge DuBose ordered his release, the Trump administration issued a press release criticizing Judge DuBose, a Biden appointee, for ordering the release of a “criminal illegal alien… with an international warrant for homicide.”
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If you’re fascinated by the improbable career trajectory of George Conway—the Wachtell Lipton partner turned Trump antagonist turned Democratic candidate for Congress—check out Timothy Bella’s profile of Conway for The Washington Post (gift link).
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The Georgia Supreme Court sanctioned assistant district attorney Deborah Leslie, previously mentioned in these pages for an AI-related snafu, by suspending her privilege to practice before that court for six months.
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Congratulations to Robert Boxie III, a Harvard Law School graduate and former associate at Vinson & Elkins, who this summer will become the youngest bishop in the United States. Pope Leo announced Boxie’s promotion last Friday, as reported by The Washington Post (gift link). From Biglaw associate to Your Excellency—pretty excellent!
In memoriam: Abraham Foxman—who graduated from NYU Law and used his legal training to fight antisemitism, as a lawyer and then the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League—passed away at 86. May he rest in peace.
Judge of the Week: Judge James Ho.
Last Wednesday, at a Federalist Society event in Los Angeles, Judge James Ho (5th Cir.) called out some of his fellow judges. Or as former Ho clerk Eric Wessan put it (in sharing a video of his former boss), Ho criticized “conservative judges for ‘punching right’ but not left,” while “call[ing] out his colleagues for cowardice in the face of unpopular decisions.” For a write-up of his comments, see Bloomberg Law.
After reminding the audience of his boycott against hiring clerks from Yale Law School—after free-speech problems at YLS, and the administration’s unacceptable response thereto—and complaining that no judges joined him in that boycott (other than Judge Lisa Branch of the Eleventh Circuit), Judge Ho complained about what he described as a “double standard[]”:
Just last year, when the Heritage Foundation was charged with antisemitism, a number of judges made clear that they would refuse to associate with the Heritage Foundation. And they specifically boycotted an event that would have featured the Heritage Foundation’s work. There was even a whole panel of judges to talk about these issues during the most recent Federalist Society convention.
So just to review the bidding: It’s okay to boycott Heritage. But you can’t boycott woke law schools. Let’s just be very honest about what’s going on here. Let’s be candid about the double standards that plague the judiciary. It’s okay to boycott Heritage, because you’ll never be punished for attacking conservatives. It’s okay to boycott Heritage, because it’s okay to virtue signal to cultural elites. It’s okay to boycott Heritage, because judges who punch left are excoriated—but judges who punch right are celebrated.
For the full text of Judge Ho’s remarks, as well as supportive commentary, see this Volokh Conspiracy post by Professor Josh Blackman. For criticism of Judge Ho’s speech—and it really was a speech, even though he was nominally a moderator—see this Dorf on Law post by Professor Eric Segall.
I do wonder: will Judge Ho announce a boycott against hiring clerks from UCLA Law, after a recent disruptive protest of an appearance by James Percival, general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security? And at what point will Judge Ho reconsider his boycott against Yale Law? [UPDATE (5/11/2026, 4:10 p.m.): I linked to a post about the UCLA event by Professor Josh Blackman. For a very different account, see this Dorf on Law post by Professor David Marcus, who attended.]
The disruptive protest of Kristen Waggoner at YLS took place in March 2022, more than four years ago. In the intervening period, YLS introduced a number of reforms to protect free speech. To improve intellectual diversity, it hired two right-of-center faculty members, Professors Garrett West and Keith Whittington. And Heather Gerken, the dean of YLS during “The Troubles,” left last year for the Ford Foundation.
It seems to me that the administration of UCLA Law—whose response to Percival-gate was problematic on several levels, for reasons outlined in a letter sent to Dean Michael Waterstone by Jessie Appleby of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—is a bigger offender against free-speech principles than the (new) administration of Yale Law, now led by Dean Cristina Rodríguez (who has not, as far as I know, done anything problematic on speech issues).
So although I personally object to judicial boycotts—both the YLS boycott specifically, as well as the notion of judges going around boycotting X, Y, or Z (which strikes me as outside the judicial role)—if you’re going to do a boycott, do it right, Judge Ho. Take YLS off the list, at least on a “probationary” basis, and replace it with UCLA.
Could it be that YLS, because it’s a higher-ranked school than UCLA, makes for better headlines and more media attention? If that’s the issue, allow me to point out that Yale Law is no longer the #1 law school—so perhaps it can have the “consolation prize” of having its graduates eligible to clerk for Judge Ho. 😉
By the way, Judge Ho suggests that judges who silently decline to hire clerks from certain schools, such as lower-ranked schools, are “boycotting” those schools. Personally speaking, I don’t consider that much of a boycott, which Black’s Law Dictionary defines as “an action designed to achieve the social or economic isolation of an adversary, especially by the concerted refusal to do business with it” (emphasis added). It seems to me that speaking out publicly against said adversary, by encouraging or pressuring others to join you in a concerted refusal to do business, is an important part of a boycott. (For example, I might be a gold-star gay, but I do not consider myself to be engaged in a “boycott”—or “girlcott,” as the case may be.)
In other news about judges and the judiciary:
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Picking up on the theme of when judges stop being polite and start getting real, Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson traded barbs in a quick coda to Louisiana v. Callais (or actually, as a technical matter, Callais v. Louisiana). Last Monday, as Amy Howe reported at SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court granted a “granted a request to immediately finalize its opinion in [Callais], in which it struck down that state’s congressional map, to allow Louisiana to draw a new map in time for the 2026 elections.” Justice Jackson dissented, claiming that her colleagues’ decision “to issue the judgment forthwith”—i.e., to give immediate effect to its ruling—represented “principles giv[ing] way to power.” Justice Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, criticized the dissent’s arguments as “baseless and insulting”—and said that instead of the majority going hog wild, it is “the dissent’s rhetoric that lacks restraint.” For more on the Callais dust-up, read this editorial in The Wall Street Journal (gift link), titled “Justice Alito’s Intriguing Footnote,” or listen to the latest episode of Advisory Opinions. And for a fascinating historical look at when justices have turned on each other, see this SCOTUSblog post by Nora Collins.
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In happier news about the justices, congratulations to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who placed fifth among federal judges in last Wednesday’s Capital Challenge. He completed the three-mile road race in an entirely respectable 26:23, as reported by Bloomberg Law (via Howard Bashman’s How Appealing).
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Justice Kavanaugh wasn’t happy with his time, telling Bloomberg Law that he should have trained more—and next Term, he might be able to spend less time in robes and more time in running shorts. At last week’s Third Circuit Judicial Conference, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the Court’s current oral argument format has “blown up”—which he apparently meant not as a compliment, but as what happens when you go off Ozempic—and he added that the justices might revisit it this summer (via Lawrence Hurley on Twitter).
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Why is a California judge in the pages of The New York Post? In a barnburner of a brief, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Los Angeles shines the spotlight on Judge Fernando Olguin (C.D. Cal.), describing his history of dismissing serious criminal charges against undocumented immigrants. The government contends that Judge Olguin is engaged in an improper effort “to push back against ICE’s detention of aliens charged with federal crimes, if not against ICE itself.”
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In other news of judges upsetting conservatives, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui (D.D.C.) apologized at a hearing last Monday to Cole Tomas Allen, the California man accused of attempting to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, for the treatment Allen received inside a D.C. jail. Specifically, Judge Faruqui objected to Allen being placed on suicide watch, after he told FBI agents that he didn’t expect to survive the attempted assassination.
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Turning to the state courts, Justice Diana Hagen resigned from the Utah Supreme Court, after her ex-husband accused her of sending “inappropriate” text messages to an attorney who helped challenge a Republican-friendly map in her court. (Justice Hagen had previously recused herself from cases involving the lawyer in question, David Reymann.)
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