Supreme Ambitions (4 page)

It felt like a religious revival, with Judge Stinson and me quoting our favorite passages back and forth to each other and saying “Amen” in response. But instead of citing Bible verses, we were quoting from the greatest hits of judicial restraint, textualism, and related theories.

“Of course, this court isn't the only battleground in the struggle against judicial activism,” Judge Stinson said. “There are other fronts that are even more major. Are you planning to apply for Supreme Court clerkships?”

I was expecting this question, based on the clerkship write-ups of former Stinson clerks.

“Yes, Judge,” I said. “It is a dream of mine to clerk for a justice of the Supreme Court.”

“Excellent. I encourage—
strongly
encourage—all of my law clerks to apply to the Court. It reflects well on me as a judge to send my clerks on to the Court. And I like to be thought well of. I like to be a judge who's going places.”

“You have a lifetime appointment to a federal appeals court! That's pretty great, you know! Who else do you have to impress? Where else is there to go?”

Judge Stinson's eyebrows arched electrically. What had come over me? I couldn't believe my excited utterance—in a raised voice, fraught with emotion, and without a prefatory “Judge” or “Your Honor.” It was far too casual, if not downright disrespectful, and far from the proper way to address a member of the federal judiciary.

The judge stared right at me. I braced myself for her reprimand.

“Excuse me, Your Honor,” I said before she could respond, modulating my voice. “I meant no disrespect. I was just, well, I was thinking, you have such an amazing position …”

“Audrey,” Judge Stinson said, shaking her head and sighing. “There is
always
somewhere else to go. Always.”

She paused, touching a bejeweled finger to her perfect chin, and looked off into space for a few moments. Then her gaze returned to me.

“So you're interested in clerking for the Court,” she said. “Of the current justices, who are your favorites, and why?”

“I have two. I admire Justice Keegan for his focus on the text and for articulating the theory of originalism so cogently. And I admire Justice Wilson for his close attention to history, and for his open-mindedness—his willingness to reconsider doctrinal questions that other judges view as settled. I would apply to all nine justices, which I understand is protocol, but I would most love to clerk for either Justice Keegan or Justice Wilson.”

“I am lucky enough to call both of them my friends,” said the judge, gesturing toward a wall where I could make out photographs of her with both justices. “And several of my clerks have gone on to clerk for them. I'm glad you have such good taste in justices. I never know what to expect from you Ivy League types!”

“Please, Judge, don't lump me in with everyone else! We're not all wild-eyed judicial activists.”

“Oh, Audrey, I'm just kidding. I went to Boalt Hall for law school, and I can assure you that UC Berkeley is not a hotbed of judicial restraint. Nor is the Ninth Circuit. I sometimes feel like the lone voice crying out in the wilderness when I argue in favor of deciding cases based on, you know,
the law
…”

I laughed. Yes, this interview was a game, and I was determined to play by the rules.

“One last question,” said the judge. “I have received over one thousand clerkship applications for this cycle, from the very best students at the nation's leading law schools. With over one thousand applicants, why should I hire
you
?”

The question's directness floored me. And flustered me.

“Your Honor,” I blurted out, “I'm you.”

What had I just uttered? Where had that come from? Why was I in
tent on sabotaging myself?

“Excuse me?” Judge Stinson's impeccably groomed eyebrows were raised so high that I no longer suspected Botox.

“Judge Stinson, I'm you. I'm smart, I'm ambitious, and I'm relentless. I came up from a humble background and made something of myself. Some people underestimate me—they expect me, as an Asian American woman from modest means, to be some sort of wallflower—but then I prove them wrong. Big time.”

I was too nervous to stop and gauge the judge's reaction. I plowed ahead. I had no choice.

“I work hard, extremely hard, until I get the job done. I learned all about hard work from my mother, a nursing assistant, who has worked long hours for years. I've inherited the immigrant work ethic from my parents—my mother, an immigrant from the Philippines, and my father, the descendant of Irish immigrants. I take nothing for granted. If selected for the high honor of clerking for you, I will not disappoint. You have my word.”

Judge Stinson stared at me. I let the silence linger. Normally I hate conversational breaks, but I had said my piece.

I realized at that moment where the “I'm you” had come from. A few years ago, a Senate candidate in Delaware responded to accusations that she dabbled in witchcraft by running television ads that started out with her saying, “I'm not a witch. I'm you.” After watching this video endlessly on YouTube (because I found it hilarious), the phrase “I'm you” seeped into my subconscious—from where it burst forth during a moment of great stress.

“Audrey,” Judge Stinson said, after a silence that seemed to last forever, “I don't normally do this …”

What was she about to do? Throw me out of chambers? The Yale clerkships adviser would be thrilled to learn how I mouthed off to a Ninth Circuit judge, who would probably refuse to hire Yalies for the next five years in retaliation for my rudeness.

“I prefer to wait until I've finished all my interviews before making
offers,” said Judge Stinson. “But I feel a special connection with you. I would love to have you as my clerk.”

I felt nauseous. I felt elated. This was actually happening.

“Judge Stinson,” I said, trying to imbue my voice with maximum gravitas, “I would be honored to have you as my judge.”

We shook hands again. Her handshake was firm, but her hand was impossibly soft. Pearl cream?

“Excellent,” the judge said. “I look forward to our working together.”

Before I knew it, it was a sweltering Sunday afternoon in August 2012. Upon landing at LAX, I called my old pal Pervez, who had driven me to and from my interview with Judge Stinson a year earlier. After my two suitcases were stashed securely in the back of the minivan, we drove off to Pasadena.

“So,” Pervez asked, “why did you decide to live in Pasadena?”

“I'm going to be working long hours as a clerk, and I don't drive. So I need to be close to the courthouse.”

“Ah yes, the courthouse I took you to—beautiful courthouse. Anyone who works in that building must be very important!”

Although I was glad that Pervez no longer viewed my clerkship as purely clerical, I responded to his impressed-sounding tone with humility. I emphasized that law clerks simply assist the judge, who is the ultimate decision maker, and that everything coming out of chambers would go out under the judge's name. As clerks, we were like Santa's elves—essential but unseen contributors to the process.

This limited responsibility was something I actually appreciated, at least some of the time. I had just graduated from law school (and not a very practically oriented school at that), and I was not even admitted to the bar (New York bar exam results wouldn't come out until November). What did I know—about law, or life, or anything? It gave me comfort to know that I would just be doing research and making recommendations, which my judge was free to ignore or override as she saw fit.

On other days, of course—like, for example, the day that I got the clerkship—I felt excited by my proximity to power, and confident that I would be an amazing law clerk. But today I felt anxious, like a third grader about to start a new school year. I suspected that this vacillation between anxiety and minimization of one's role, on the one hand, and confidence and exaggeration of one's influence, on the other, was common among law clerks.

There wasn't much traffic on this Sunday, so it didn't take long for us to arrive at my new home: a nondescript, run-down, low-rise apartment complex a few blocks from the courthouse. I had taken the small studio without visiting it in person (because I couldn't afford another flight out to Los Angeles), so I had seen it only in pictures. Like someone you've seen only in an online dating profile, it looked dumpier in person.

Pervez took my heavy suitcases all the way to my door, on the second floor of the open-air building. Once again, as I had done when he drove me to my clerkship interview, I gave him $100 on an $80 metered fare. I was happy to be generous, especially given how nice he was and how much he had to fight with my bags, but I did feel a twinge of money-related worry as I fished the twenties out of my wallet.

Money worries were why I had gone with this apartment, a unit passed down among several cycles of Stinson clerks, along with IKEA furniture on its last legs. So I wasn't that troubled after I opened the door and surveyed the cramped, borderline grim-looking quarters, which looked like a motel room where a down-on-his-luck movie outlaw might hole up while on the lam. This was what I had expected. This was what it looked like to be living on a law clerk's salary with more than $150,000 in student loans. And this was not where I'd be spending most of my time anyway; former Stinson clerks had joked about how chambers was their real home.

At least Michael Nomellini, the prior tenant, had left the apartment very clean (especially for a guy). It didn't take me long to unpack and tidy up the place. Since it was still bright outside, I decided to check out the apartment's small swimming pool, located in the central courtyard.
I just wanted to take a quick look, so I didn't bother changing into a swimsuit.

The pool itself was well maintained but empty. There was only one resident sitting next to the pool, and she was hard to miss: a young, large African American woman who reminded me of Gabourey Sidibe from
Precious
. She wore a red bikini with white polka dots. And she was reading a copy of … the
Stanford Law Review
?

I stood at the edge of the pool area, behind the white metal gate. My neighbor, deeply engrossed in her reading, did not notice my presence. Should I go over and say hello?

Intrigued by my neighbor, I didn't notice how much I was leaning into the gate—which swung open with a loud creak. I fell forward before regaining my footing. The young woman looked up, and our eyes met.

“Girl, what you looking at?”

Her confrontational tone rendered me speechless.

“What,” she said, “are your ears as small as your tiny white ass?”

I tried to defuse her hostility with warmth. I walked over to her, put on a big smile, and extended my hand.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Audrey. I just moved into the building.”

“Harvetta,” she said, rising to her feet and shaking my hand. “Harvetta Chambers.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, startle you. I was just, well, you know …”

“Oh, I know, all right! You were just checking out my big black booty!”

She slapped her prodigious thighs and laughed. I joined in, feeling relieved; Harvetta's belligerence was playful. Was she going to be my Sassy African American Friend?

“Actually,” I said, “I noticed your reading material. No offense to the
Stanford Law Review
, but I go with
Us Weekly
when working on my tan.”

“You kidding? I
love
law review articles. I can get interested in almost any type of law. For my job I'm a state law kinda gal, but today I'm reading on the federal side, about the effect of the SEC's new proxy access rule on shareholder value for small companies. Next up is a linguistic analysis of ERISA preemption. Followed by an empirical assessment of
dissentals—you know, dissents from denial of rehearing en banc in the circuit courts. Right now I'm like a pig in shit!”

I didn't quite know what to say to that.

“So,” I said, “did you go to Stanford Law?”

“Naw,” Harvetta said, “Stanford? That place is for rich bitches. I keep it
real
—I went to McGeorge. You a lawyer too?”

“Well, almost, kind of,” I said, as I frantically tried to recall what I even
knew
about McGeorge. “I took the bar a few months ago, but I haven't gotten the results yet, so I'm not yet a lawyer. Right now I'm clerking for a judge.”

“Get the fuck outta here! Me too. Who you clerking for?”

“Judge Stinson? Ninth Circuit?”

“Is that a statement, or a question? Because I've heard of the Ninth Circuit. Isn't that the crazy liberal court that's always getting smacked down by the Supreme Court?”

I felt myself blushing. Even though I hadn't started work yet, I wanted to defend the honor of the court, or at least of my judge.

“My boss, Judge Stinson, is one of the more conservative judges …”

“Yeah, look, you don't need to explain yourself to me,” Harvetta said. “I'm just clerking for a state judge, not one of those fancy federal judges.”

“For whom are you clerking?”

“Sherwin Lin, California Supreme Court.”

I didn't know
that
much about state court clerkships, but I had a vague recollection of the California Supreme Court using long-term staff lawyers rather than law clerks.

“Oh,” I said, trying my best to sound politely confused, “I thought that the California justices didn't have law clerks?”

“Yeah,” Harvetta said, “the Cal Supremes usually roll with permanent staff attorneys. But Lin is trying something new—a mix of staff attorneys and term clerks. His staff attorneys are up in San Fran with everyone else. We're his first two clerks, working with him here in Pasadena, where he lives. He got permission from the court to keep chambers down here for now because his dad is real old and sick and lives here. It's
an experiment. Hope we don't fuck that shit up for everybody else!”

My strict Filipina mother did not tolerate profanity, so people who cursed a fair amount—like Jeremy, and definitely like Harvetta—sometimes threw me for a loop. My face must have betrayed my discomfort.

“What, is my potty mouth freaking you out, girl? Don't you worry. I am like the president,” Harvetta said, raising her arms skyward before adopting a markedly different tone, straight out of the evening newscast. “I am extremely talented at calibrating my manner of speaking to my audience. Do you think I obtained a clerkship with the Honorable Sherwin Lin by cursing up a blue streak during the interview?”

Once again, Harvetta left me speechless. She liked to read law review articles for fun. She could oscillate seamlessly between gangster and grande dame. Who
was
this bizarre woman?

“So,” she asked, as I tried to collect my dropped jaw from the pool deck, “where did you go to law school? Some fancy-ass place?”

“Um, Yale?”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said, smacking my forearm—surprisingly hard. “Don't worry, I won't player-hate. My boss went to Yale, so I have mad respect.”

That's right: Harvetta's judge, Sherwin Lin, was still renowned at Yale for his brilliance. He served as executive editor of the law journal, won a slew of prizes at graduation, and clerked on the D.C. Circuit (of course) followed by the U.S. Supreme Court (of course). He was nominated to the Ninth Circuit before the age of 40, but some of his controversial speeches and academic writings as a UCLA law professor derailed his nomination. After the Republicans successfully filibustered his Ninth Circuit appointment, the governor appointed him to the California Supreme Court.

Despite (or perhaps because of?) my puzzlement at Harvetta, I wanted to get to know her better. She seemed friendly, beneath the tough-talking veneer, and she was without a doubt an interesting character. We exchanged contact info and agreed to hang out sometime.

As I headed back to my apartment, I continued to think about Har
vetta. I would have expected someone who liked to read law review articles for pleasure to have attended a higher-ranked law school than McGeorge (whose rank I looked up on my iPhone almost immediately after we parted ways; it wasn't even in the
U.S. News
top 100). And I wondered about where her whole “street talk” thing came from. If I had to guess, she was from an upper-middle-class African American family but was trying to “keep it real” by sounding like someone from a more modest background.

Based on the fact that she had landed a clerkship with Justice Lin, Harvetta must have done fairly well in law school. But even a clerkship on the California Supreme Court, the highest court of the largest state, was less prestigious than most federal court clerkships. As for U.S. Supreme Court clerkships, I wondered: did Harvetta even know about them?