Episode 85: Julia Smith Gibbons
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
00:51:36
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Show Notes
Judge Julia Smith Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit shares how the relationships she formed throughout her career paved the way for her to become the first woman trial judge of a court of record in Tennessee, followed by distinguished service on both the U.S. District Court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is the recipient of the Devitt Award, the highest honor awarded to an Article III judge, for significant contributions to the administration of justice, the advancement of the rule of law, and improvement of society as a whole. Listen in as Judge Gibbons shares insights gained throughout her trailblazing career.
Relevant episode links:
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit , Karen Scott - past episode , Tennessee Lawyers' Association for Women , Judicial Conference Committee , Anna Karenina , The Firm , The Pelican Brief
About Julia Smith Gibbons :
Judge Julia Smith Gibbons was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President George W. Bush and took office on August 2, 2002. Prior to her appointment as circuit judge, she served as United States District Judge for the Western District
of Tennessee, being appointed by President Ronald Reagan and taking office on June 24, 1983. She served as Chief Judge of the district court from 1994-2000.
Judge Gibbons was appointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to chair the Budget Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States in January 2005. She served in that position until January 2018. From 1994-99 she was chair of the Judicial Resources Committee of
the Judicial Conference. From 2000-03 she was a member of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.
In 2021, Judge Gibbons received the Devitt Award, (highest honor awarded to an Article III judge), for distinguished career and significant contributions to the administration of justice, the advancement of the rule of law, and the improvement of society as a whole.
Prior to becoming a federal district judge, Judge Gibbons served as judge of the Tennessee Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit from 1981-83. She was appointed to that position by Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander in 1981 and was elected to a full term in 1982. From 1979 to 1981 Judge Gibbons was Legal Advisor to Governor Alexander. She was in the private practice of law from 1976 to 1979 with the Memphis firm of Farris, Hancock, Gilman, Branan & Lanier. In 1975-76 she served as law clerk to the late Honorable William E. Miller, Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1975.
Judge Gibbons received her J.D. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. At Virginia she was elected to Order of the Coif and was a member of the Editorial Board of the Virginia Law Review. She received her B.A. magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University in
1972 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Judge Gibbons is an elder at Idlewild Presbyterian Church and a former President of the Memphis Rotary Club. Judge Gibbons was born and grew up in Pulaski, Tennessee. She has been married since 1973 to William L. Gibbons, formerly District Attorney General for Shelby County (1996-2011) and Tennessee Commissioner of Safety and Homeland Security (2011-16). He currently chairs the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis and is President/CEO of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission. They have two adult children.
Transcript
I'm very pleased to have joined us on the show, Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Welcome, Judge.
Thank you.
You have an amazing career on the bench, a lot of firsts and trailblazing in terms of being the first woman in a lot of different positions, on the state court and then the US district court. Before we got into all of your wonderful career on the bench, fundamentally, how was it that you decided you wanted to study the law and perhaps become a lawyer?
It was one of those decisions that looking back on it, I marvel at how young, inexperienced, and unworldly I was. I marvel at the fact that I managed to make a good decision for myself about a career path because it could so easily have gone another way. I was a Latin major in college. I was very interested in classical archeology. I thought that I would teach high school Latin but a lot of things were happening when I was in college. Doors were opening to women that previously had not been opened. I began to think of other options.
By the time of my senior year, I had given up teaching high school Latin and decided that I was either going to graduate school in classics working toward a PhD, or I was going to go to law school. I ultimately decided to go to law school even though I had very little knowledge about what being a lawyer was like. I knew a little more about what having a PhD was like. My brother had PhD in History. I thought I had the ability to be an ivory tower intellectual. That was not who I was. I‘m a huge extrovert but I'm more a people person than an ivory tower intellectual pursuing research and so on. I decided to go to law school.
Do you even know consciously what made you think of that as an alternative? Have you seen lawyers or something on television?
There was one family member who was a lawyer. It was an uncle. Two of his four sons, my first cousins, were becoming lawyers. They were a little bit older than I was. It was the understanding of how my mind worked and what rudimentary understanding I had of what lawyers did. It was very rudimentary, I assure you.
Even when you enter law school or you're in law school, once you graduate, you still don't realize all of the different options and the different things that you’ve viewed.
Absolutely, not. I was almost as clueless when I graduated from law school as I was in law school.
It's getting a little bit better but I remember being in law school and graduating in the early '90s. There were only a couple of things you knew that you could do to get a job. You could get a clerkship. You could go to a firm. You can work for the government and maybe public interest. That's it but that's such a small part of the things that you can do.
My law clerks are much better prepared. The law schools do an amazing job now. It was lucky for me that everything turned out all right but it certainly was not because I had this array of options before me and was choosing one that I felt was particularly suited to me.
Get as much information and prepare yourself as well as you could.
You did go into private practice after law school.
First, I did a clerkship in the court on Irvine. I knew enough to want to do a clerkship, but it was also a very practical matter. My husband and I graduated from undergraduate school the same year. He took a year off to work before starting law school. He was going to be in his third year of law school at Vanderbilt. When I graduated from Virginia, I needed to be in Nashville for a year. I specifically needed to be in Nashville for a year before we went someplace else. Fortunately, I was able to get an appellate clerkship in Nashville.
Is that surreal? You're on the court that you originally clerked on out of law school.
I'm pretty sure that of all the current members of the court, I have the longest perspective of the court and how it has evolved and changed. I saw the court when I was a clerk. I was a very young district judge. At the time I became a district judge, we were no longer doing this. At that time, district judges were routinely asked to sit with the Court of Appeals for a week a year. From 1983 until the time I was appointed to the court in 2002, I was sitting with the Court of Appeals usually a week a year. I saw how the court changed and how the procedures changed. I knew all the judges who had served in that time period. I have a pretty special perspective on the court looking back.
From so many different positions before officially joining the court, that's pretty amazing.
It's interesting for me to think about it.
It's helpful to have that long-term knowledge of how the court has operated and how it has changed over time. I'm sure that's valuable in terms of figuring out where the court might go. You did join the bench quite early and then moved to the Federal system as well. How did that come about that you decided that a good thing to do would be to become a judge?
I didn't decide that. The governor who appointed me initially decided that. I had no thought. I was 30 years old. I had a husband and a new baby. I was working as a legal advisor to Lamar Alexander during his first term as Governor of Tennessee. My husband and I had been there for two and a half years. We’re thinking we needed to go back to private practice. The government service we had is valued more in private practice these days, but it didn't seem to us that it was valued at that time.
We felt like we would get behind in terms of the progression within our law firms if we didn't return. We were planning to go back to Memphis. A vacancy occurred in the State Circuit Court. At that time, the governor got to fill the vacancy. Now, there's a commission that suggests names for the governor. It's a harder process for somebody who aspires to be a judge, or maybe it's not a harder process.
In any event, we were sitting in a staff meeting one morning. The governor usually brought in a briefcase. He pulled out a letter from his briefcase and said, "There's going to be this vacancy." He said this to the group at large, "Who could I appoint to that vacancy?" He looks over me and says, "You're not old enough." I said, "I'm four months past old enough." This was in April. I knew you had to be 30. I turned 30 in December.
Later that morning, the conversation dropped. He called me in and said, "I would like to appoint you. You would be good at this." The bench and bar thought he had lost his mind, "It's a 30-year-old woman. What a disaster." That was the prediction. Some of them were quite vocal about it. It turned out okay. We can talk about them if you want to. In any event, that's how it happened. There was no volition on that part other than saying, "Okay."
He worked with you so he saw something in you.
I was his legal advisor. There had been an older person also in a legal role the first year I was there. He had left. I was his primary legal advisor at a pretty early stage in my career. That meant that I spent a lot of time one-on-one with him, particularly during the legislative session. I don't know if you know anything about Lamar Alexander but he's a very well-educated lawyer. He was Phi Beta Kappa at Vanderbilt and went to NYU Law School. He had a Federal clerkship with John Minor Wisdom on the Fifth Circuit, one of the legendary seekers in the Civil Rights Movement.
He's not necessarily your typical governor. He wanted to know all the substantive things about what was in the bills he was signing and what the considerations were. I spent a lot of time briefing him on other things too. Most especially, we spent a lot of time one-on-one talking about what the legislature had done. It is still one of my acts of joy that I didn't let anything slip back and let him sign something he would be sorry about later because he would not have been happy.
It's a good thing nothing like that happened before he had that idea to appoint you. You get the appointment. It's not something that you had thought about before that. How was that transition? You decided you enjoy it. He correctly saw something in you.
At first, I decided I better figure out as much as I could. I had been fortunate in that. Although I had only been in private practice for two and a half years, I had done litigation. It was a small Memphis firm. You were thrown in the middle of things from the beginning. Other than doing jury trials by myself, I had done a lot of the work that went on in circuit court, or at least I had a taste of it in those two and a half years. I also knew another pretty young circuit judge that Lamar appointed in Upper-East Tennessee. I went over and visited with him. I visited with that future circuit judge's colleagues. I tried to get as much information as I could and prepare myself as well as I could, and then I got started.
You moved from the state court to the Federal bench. How did that come about? How was that transition?
Lawyers are objective. Even if they think you're going to be terrible, if you aren't, they're fair about it. They recognize that. Being a judge felt natural from the very beginning. I expected to be intimidated and I wasn't, which was a blessing. Maybe you're right that Governor Alexander did see something in me that I could not see in myself at that point. The lawyers got on board with Governor Alexander. In retrospect, I always said, "I knew it was going to work out fine when the same lawyers who were horrified started claiming it was their idea."
That is so true. Everybody wants to claim success. Everybody wants to play the role.
You have to really plan to become a state trial judge.
I had to run for the election the following year. This comes before the Federal appointment. The lawyers were extremely supportive of that race. I got the bar endorsement. They were helpful. I managed to get elected pretty easily. I'm sure if that step hadn't happened, I never would have been considered for the Federal court at the age I was. Looking back, that's how the Federal position came about.
The vacancy occurred in a district court. Governor Alexander's mentor was Senator Howard Baker who was then the Majority Leader of the United States Senate in a time when bipartisanship and goodwill abounded. It's hard to believe that in today’s environment but I'm sure that Governor Alexander whispered in Senator Baker's ear. Before I knew it, Senator Baker was calling me to come to Washington to recommend to the president that I be nominated. The lawyers were very helpful.
I didn't have enough years of experience for the ABA to rate me qualified to be a Federal district judge but people said good things about me and my performance as a judge. They waived the years of the experience requirement. I was rated qualified. It all came into place but looking back on it from my perspective and I'm sure from that of others, it's an incredible story.
It's remarkable. It's something that unfortunately is hard to believe these days.
It couldn't happen these days, but it did happen then.
It's so much about taking advantage of timing.
It was where I was at a particular place in time. I was young and dumb and sitting under a tree. Lightning struck, not once but twice. I did nothing to promote myself for either of those judgeships. I did do one thing and one thing only. It's to promote myself to the Court of Appeals. We will get to that story later.
That's interesting. Also embedded in that story is the question that I always think about too in terms of mentoring and sponsorship or whatever you want to call it, both in terms of the trusted relationship you had with the governor and then his relationship with the senator who happened to be in a good position at that point in time. The layers of all of that come together and the role that mentors and sponsors play in saying good things about you in rooms that you're not even in. You may not even know how many other people helped or said good things. In retrospect, there had to be a few of them because this stuff doesn't happen unless there was this consensus. You became the chief judge of the district court as well. How was that?
That was in about '94, probably eleven years after I started in the district court. That was fine. Being the chief district judge or the chief judge of any court is in many ways a bankless task. You have judges competing for resources and judges sometimes acting in ways that cause problems for your top administrative people in the court. You've got to run interference. It's a hard leadership road.
The district judge that I clerked for, Alicemarie Stotler, became the chief judge after my time.
I know Judge Stotler pretty well.
She's a wonderful and amazing judge to work for.
I know her through National Court.
She handled that very well but I know there can be some sticky situations there with your colleagues and other things too, but all of it is expanding your different skills and things that you can do, and that you can add to your next position. Tell me about this. You did do something on your behalf for the Sixth Circuit position. What was that?
You will be surprised by how much of my career is attributable to a very short period of time. Governor Alexander was a Republican governor but he was sworn in three days early at the request of the democratic leadership of the state legislature, the democratic state attorney general, and the democratic US attorney. The reason was that his predecessor was signing pardons and commutations of some of the most serious and brutal criminals in the Tennessee prison system. There were rumors that he was going to sign more. There were many rumors about money changing hands. He was sworn in three days early.
In the wake of that situation, he asked Fred Thompson to review all the pardons and commutations that had been issued in the last days of the prior administration. I was a staff member who worked with Fred Thompson, who was his choice as outside counsel. When the vacancy on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals arose, Senator Fred Thompson was our senior senator from Tennessee. I called him. I knew him entirely based on that relationship that had occurred within the first few weeks of the Alexander administration. I said, "I would like to be considered." He said, "You would be great." That's not the whole story but that's how I ultimately got the job.
You put out the ask to the right person.
I wouldn't have been in a position probably to have called him to ask, nor would he have been in a position to react favorably had we not had those weeks of working together back in 1979.
I think about that in so many different ways too. I tell newer lawyers, "You want to get out in the community and do other things so that more than just the people in the hallway of your law firm office or wherever know who you are. They understand your judgment. They work with you. They can speak to your judgment about things even if it isn't on a legal case, a bar association, or something to get out there." Your story is another good reason to do that. Who knows who you will work with and meet, and have some connection with? Who knows where you all will be down the line? It wouldn't be in the position you were in.
Another thing I would like to say about my career is we need to give credit to the people who enabled my career for wanting to see women in positions that men had traditionally occupied. If there had not been a desire to do that, they would never have reached out to help somebody who is 30 and then 32 be, first, a state circuit judge, and then a Federal district judge. There was less of that motivation by the time I went to the Court of Appeals but I'm sure it was still a factor to Senator Thompson. He does deserve credit for realizing that it was about time for things to change.
It’s really important for people to see that a woman in a very public position could do both the job of a mother and the job of judge well.
It's having the political will to make that happen. I know Judge Dorothy Nelson who I also worked for on the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit and other Federal courts were so radically changed even during the Carter administration with so many women being appointed to the bench. It was good timing for that and being open to that, and having not only the political will but also having other people advocating for that, whether it's women's groups or others who were saying, "It's about time. You should consider a broader range of folks for those positions." How have you enjoyed being back on the Sixth Circuit and in the judicial role on the court that you clerked?
I like being an appellate judge. I wanted to make the switch not because I didn't like the district court. I loved the district court but I had already been there for nineteen years. The way the Federal system works is in order to leave and get the value of the service in terms of the salary for life, you have to stay until you're 65. While I loved being a trial judge, it's very demanding. Every minute of your life is scheduled. I also like the research and writing. I loved the courtroom experience.
I thought it would probably be better for me personally to switch gears to a job where I could walk in the door some morning and say, "Do I feel like working on this opinion or that opinion?" rather than saying, "At 8:45, you have X. At 9:00, you have this. Over your lunch hour from your trial, you have this. By the way, when you adjourn for the day, we're going to try to squeeze in that." I thought that for me, it was better to transition to something where I had a little more space in my life.
That's a good point that some people don't fully consider if they're thinking about the bench, what it means and the difference between joining the appellate bench or the trial bench. Especially if you have young children or you want some flexibility in your day, that's not likely. You know exactly where you're going to be from 9:00 to 5:00.
I had raised the children for the most part during my trial court days. Our daughter, Carrie, was six months old when I became a state circuit judge. Our son, Will, who's five and a half years younger was born while I was a Federal district judge.
You have to accommodate different schedules and have that in mind.
I was hard-headed enough to believe that you can do it all. It's a myth except, for us, it wasn't such a myth. I don't necessarily recommend it. My husband was a practicing attorney during those years. My husband had a local elective office. We were busy but the children turned out fine. Isn't it a great joy? I tell people that if I had hovered over them anymore, I probably would've ruined them. It worked out.
It's a blessing to have both a family and a career. Perhaps certain personalities also would benefit from having a little more leeway and independence there. It all worked out well, which is good to hear. It's being in the place at the right time for the early appointments for sure. Do you have any suggestions for those who might be considering the bench or thinking that it might be something they would like to pursue?
I thought about that because my experience was so different. I think about even in Tennessee how much harder it would be for a woman. Women have entered the judiciary in significant numbers. I'm not sure anybody has done a study, but the voter trust in women judicial candidates is running pretty high. At least that's my observation. It's harder. The governor can't just pick. If there's a vacancy on a trial court, there's now a commission. You have to go through that process.
That's also true for the appellate courts even at the time when I was appointed. You can also think in Tennessee about running for election. Generally, the elections are only every eight years unless somebody has filled the vacancy. They have to run in the next August election. You would have to plan. You couldn't sit under a tree at this point and become a state trial judge in Tennessee. It's a hard process.
We went through our county general election. I never want to sound political but it was a heart-breaker for some excellent candidates and some excellent incumbents. It's a brutal process. I hated that there are so many obstacles to seeking judicial office at this point. One could make an argument, "It's more open. Everybody can run in an election. You were privileged. You happen to know a governor and he happened to ask you to come to work on his staff." That's all true but it is not an easy thing to get the people to vote for you and have enough money to run a credible campaign. I've done that too. I've been appointed to a judgeship about every way there is. My heart goes out to the judicial candidates.
That's an important consideration as well in terms of deciding whether you think you would like to be a judge and that you have natural skillsets. Something you would like to do is one thing, but then getting there can be different too depending on whether it's a Federal appointment, elected office, or appointment and then election at the state level. It varies. If you're thinking about it, you have to know that and understand the gauntlet in each case what you're going to have to go through. I know some people who were like, "I would like to be a judge but I never want to go through an election." If that's how people are chosen in your state, you're not going to get through the gauntlet if you don't even want to go forward to do that, but it's hard.
I would mention one other thing within the Federal system. There is another potential route that is not so political. Applications for magistrate judges in the Federal system and bankruptcy judgeships in the Federal system are merit-based. Those have become for some women a stepping stone into an Article III judgeship, not always and maybe not even often. I would encourage women who are interested in Federal judgeships and who have Federal practice to look at those options.
I'm frankly not sure what is going to happen to the bankruptcy system. I don't know that anybody is thinking about cutting judgeships but bankruptcy filings continue to fall. They have been falling since 2005 when the big change in the law occurred. That continued to fall during the pandemic rather dramatically. It's another thing for people to take into account.
The magistrate judge is an opportunity and position that I also was thinking about that people wouldn't necessarily think about or know about. One of the first people I had on the show was Karen Scott who's a magistrate judge here in California. It's true that several magistrate judges have become district judges nominated to the Article III positions. It is very possible for that to happen. In the meantime, I know people who enjoy serving in the magistrate judge role. I'm glad you mentioned that.
Whenever I get an application for a law clerk position, and somebody tells me that their ambition is to be a judge, I go, "Do you know how hard that is?" It's so crazy. I should be the one having to deliver the message about how hard it is when it wasn't all hard for me but what happened to me doesn't happen.
Lightning striking many times as a result of this certain period repeatedly over your life is pretty amazing.
It's a very improbable story. I tried hard to measure up to the faith that the folks who helped me get here that are ahead of me.
That's one of the things. When people have faith in you and go out on a limb for you, it does a couple of things. One is you're like, "I want to make sure I honor their faith in me, work hard, and do a good job." The only way to pay people back for that is to pay it forward, whether it's through your law clerks. For others, it's to offer advice and help other people.
I have been acutely aware since the minute I walked out on the bench when I was a state circuit judge that I had to get it right. I'll tear up when I say this, but other women's success, abilities and opportunities were going to depend on me and others who had this opportunity early on before that opportunity was more generally available to win. I knew I couldn't mess up. In a sense, we were carrying the weight of future generations on our shoulders.
People need the maximum education in how somebody who seems improbable, could steal a job and do it well.
Being much more acutely aware of that, people think of that now not in the same way because it is a little bit more available.
I was doing a talk several years ago for the Tennessee Lawyers' Association for Women, which is a group. I was involved in the founding of the organization back in the day. I was speaking to them many years after I had become a judge. I was trying to get together my remarks and thinking back on those early days. I'm sitting at my computer in my office. Suddenly tears are running down my cheeks. I've made it a very emotional moment.
It's acknowledging that and recognizing that you could release that. You had felt that obligation and the importance of doing well in that role.
I never hid the fact that I had children, a family, and other responsibilities. I thought it was important for people to see that a woman in a very public position could do both the job of a mother and the job of a judge well. I was not shy about saying, "I have to do X. We have to stop when we have to stop." I was upfront about that. Probably some people would have chosen a different path. If a man had to drop the child off at daycare, I was a good one to start after he could get there as opposed to 30 minutes before the time to drop the child off. That wasn't a bad thing. I tried to do a little consciousness raising throughout the profession.
That's an interesting point because there are two different talks to take with regard to that. One is to compartmentalize that, keep that separate, and focus on the law or the profession. The other avenue is the way you chose, which is to talk about that and keep it in the discussion so people were aware that both things were going on. You had a growing family and you also had your judicial career.
I tried to be sure that they knew I was aware, whether they were male or female. Many of them were in the same situation.
On the one hand, that also keeps people able to look at women as judges saying, "We're not going to disqualify someone that says they have family responsibilities. They can't do this particular role." We have people who are doing both. The other part of that is what you mentioned. You have an influential role as a judge. Keeping that in a discussion and keeping that in people's minds, generally, male or female, in terms of how we have other things going on in our lives. We're being courteous to each other with regard to those obligations, and being conscious of people's time and family time in that regard.
One decision I made early on that truly served me very well is I decided I was a 30-year-old woman. I was married. I had a young daughter. I was not a 60-something-year-old man, which is what most of my colleagues were. People needed to see who I was as a person. They needed the maximum education on how somebody who seems improbable could still do this job and do it well.
That's interesting. Were there other things that you were conscious of in that regard?
We have covered that. As we were talking, it came out. I'm not sorry that it did because it's an important thing to be said. I probably don't have anything else to say on that topic if you want to move on to whatever.
I have some questions in terms of advocacy because you've served in so many different judicial positions. Feel free to discuss what is effective advocacy in the trial court, the district court, or the Court of Appeals. What does that look like to you? I put it in the category of making your job easier in terms of deciding cases.
I did an advocacy piece with a Federal bar association group in Detroit. In the course of that, I decided that I'm way too intuitive about what I think is good advocacy and who I think is the best person to answer those questions. If you come at me with, "What is the best thing to help a judge decide the case?" I'll question the assumption. The judge in most cases if it's an area of the law that we see frequently, we know the area of the law better than many of the advocates who appear before us.
That's not a good thing. That is a failure of advocacy because so many practitioners don't want to get a narrow focus on their case. The judge might be looking at it from the standpoint of, "If I rule in your favor, where does this take the development of the law? Where are we going?" It's a bigger picture point of view. If a council can try to have a viewpoint that is more like the ones the judges have, then maybe there could be better communication on some of these difficult issues. If I've got a case we rarely see, then there's room for a lawyer to help me.
If it's a criminal case, and I've been first a Federal trial judge and then a Federal appellate judge for as long as I have, I'm probably going to understand whether the argument you are making is somewhere within the range of what's possible or desirable, or whether you are out there in a fantasy-land in terms of where the law is going to go. Section 1983 cases are the same way. The lawyer ought to have an appreciation of the audience. It's going to be harder to sell something unique if where your case falls is in the heartland of a bunch of cases that have already been decided.
That's particularly true at the appellate level and sometimes in the district court too. That's part of our job, especially as appellate advocates. The law is a stream and the case is a pebble in that stream. You want to say, "The pebble belongs here. Is it going to affect where the stream of the law is going? Are we okay with that in this particular case or other cases?" You give a comfort level to the court, "Even if you open this a little bit and change a little bit here, it's not going to change things in a way that is harmful or a way that doesn't seem to go where the law is going." It's how I see our job as appellate lawyers. That's an extra thing.
That's a good one for your job.
Reinforcements are what we should be thinking about when we're presenting our cases. I think of it that way. You got information when you first joined the bench. Are there any particular judges that you have admired or learned from? What did you appreciate about their judging?
I've learned from a lot of different people. I've had the privilege of not only serving with a great group of judges first in the state trial court, the district court, and my current court. I've had the opportunity to know so many judges across the country from the Judicial Conference Committee work I've done. I couldn't start naming names. I have too many folks whom I do admire. You get a piece of something useful here and a piece there. There's not anybody I've ever modeled myself on or who but there are so many people who contributed to who I am as a judge and as the leader I tried to be in the conference positions I had.
That's another aspect of serving on the bench too. There are the individual cases that you're deciding but also, there are administrative positions, policy positions, and these national convening of the different courts and judges. That's a different way to serve.
I've been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to serve pretty extensively within the committee structure of the Judicial Conference. I was a member of the Judicial Resources Committee back in the '90s. I chaired that committee for five years. In 2004 or maybe 2005, I was asked to chair the Budget Committee of the Judicial Conference. I had been a member for a year or two.
Keep going, no matter how difficult it gets.
I chaired that committee for thirteen years. I learned a lot. It's interesting to try to lead a committee that's made up of Article III judges. That's a special skill. I was in the Budget Committee position. I was responsible for advocating the passage of the judiciary's budget with Congress. That was a special obligation or burden but one that I was honored to do. It's easy to advocate for the judiciary because we have a good story to tell in those respects.
Judge Stotler enjoyed serving on the Rules Committee. There are other aspects to serving on the Federal bench that I don't think people think about.
They have been pretty significant in my judicial service. In the resources job, it was my job to advocate for the Budget Committee, which I later chaired for the personnel resources the judiciary needed. In my role as Budget Committee Chair, it was my job to advocate with Congress for the resources the judiciary as a whole needed. It was enjoyable for me. If I had not been derailed by my lawyer doing the litigation path so early, I would very much have enjoyed the advocacy as an attorney. I'm fortunate that my career as a judge gave me an opportunity to do some of those advocacy things that I wouldn't have had a chance to do otherwise.
That's a good point. I don't think that people always understand or think about all of the different things you can do, including those kinds of advocacy and leadership off the bench. That is so important to the judiciary and also the legal system. Usually, I end with a few little lightning-round questions if you're ready for those.
I've looked at your lightning-round questions. Some of them I have answers to and some I don't.
I'm not going to ask all of them. I hope I ask the ones that you want to answer and that you have answers for. Which talent would you most like to have but don't?
I would love to pick up better after myself. I'm a perpetual mess. I value being neat but I'm not naturally neat.
That's so funny that you should say that. My mom says that about me too. She's like, "Wherever you place it, that's where it's going to stay. Be careful where you decide to place something." Who are your favorite writers?
Anna Karenina was my favorite book of all time. I read it several times in my younger years. It has been a long time since I read it. When you asked that question, I went through the plot summary online and thought, "Would that still be my favorite book?" I have no idea but in terms of writers who write classics, I'm fond of Jane Austen but I'll read pretty eclectically.
I am a big reader. I love to read. I enjoy autobiographies and memoirs. I like looking at how people think about themselves and how they got to where they are. I read fiction, autobiography and history. I generally don't like historical fiction. I don't like what is called magical realism books that have children as the main character. As a matter of principle, I don't read law-related fiction.
There needs to be an escapist element to it.
I read plenty that isn't escapist. John Grisham at one time practiced law in Memphis and then lived in Oxford for a while. When he first started, his first books came out and the movie, The Firm, was made. If you were going to go anywhere, you had to have read John Grisham. I read The Firm and The Pelican Brief, and then I said, "No more." He sold a whole lot of books since then. I bear him no ill will and wish him the best but I'm not going to be reading law-related fiction given limited amounts of time.
That's funny. I've found that good writing is good writing. I learn and adopt new techniques from reading fiction and things like that. I integrate them into my legal writing also. It's good to read and enjoy others' work, and then also get some benefit from that in my professional realm. Who's your hero in real life?
It's my husband. We met freshman year at Vanderbilt. He had a difficult childhood. His father left the family when he was four. He was the youngest of six children. There's an eight-year gap between my husband and the next sibling. He and his mother were left almost alone in rural Arkansas. She was selling furniture to support him get to school in fourth grade because he didn't have clothes to wear. To most people who know him, he's a Vanderbilt-educated undergraduate and lawyer. He says that Uncle Lyndon sent him to college, meaning Lyndon Johnson's economic opportunity grants and programs.
When people meet him, they don't realize how much he had to overcome and how hard it was for him to do things that other people in more fortunate economic circumstances might have taken for granted. This was a traumatic childhood in many ways. You have to credit his mother for keeping normalcy even as she was selling possessions, and for her strong and loving care. Somehow he came out of the whole experience unscarred. The only thing I can tell that he takes away is when I'm ready to throw away a leftover, he's always sure it's ready for another day even if I know it isn't.
It stays with you. What a very strong person.
My mother knew the story of his background. She was pretty skeptical that it could work because she said, "A broken home generates more." It wasn't too long after we got married that she realized her concern had probably been not well-founded. We have been married for 49 years in 2022.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
That's something, especially now. My parents have been married for a very long time too. That's nice. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?
I had to think about that. I dithered over a guest list. I didn't have enough time to dither before I got your question. I would be making lists from now to decide who I would most want to invite to a dinner party. I'm going to have to inhibit on that one.
This is singularly the most unique answer to this. It's so charming that you're like, "I dithered over that. I don't have time to do my usual thing."
That's similar to the question that they asked in the New York Times book review, "Who are the three people?" I have always wondered how those folks came up with those names. I don't know if they're being orally interviewed. Maybe they're being interviewed in writing. I did know in advance but I couldn't set aside enough time in my life to think about who I was going to ask for dinner.
That's fine. I love that answer. Last question, what is your motto if you have one?
I don't know if it's a conscious motto but it's the thing that's most characteristic of me. It came from my mother. It's pretty much, "Keep trying." If you were raised by Julia Abernathy Smith, my mother, you kept going no matter how difficult it was.
That's a great admonition. It's a great way to wrap up our discussion. Hopefully, it will encourage others to keep going. Thank you so much, Judge, for joining me on this show. We appreciate you sharing so much.
I was glad to do it. Thank you. Take care.