Althouse: "Judge Roberts 'said to me a long time ago there was no case he had been on where he couldn't have done the other side.'"

July 21, 2005

"Judge Roberts 'said to me a long time ago there was no case he had been on where he couldn't have done the other side.'"

That's a quote from Richard Lazarus, one of John Roberts' law school friends.

Is this man a litigator to the core?

8 comments:

Ann Althouse said...: It doesn't have to be true, but as the story is told in the material assembled in the Times article, Roberts appears to be all form and no substance -- someone who can argue for whatever needs to be done, with the goal set by the client, not by him. That could make him a great judge, able to decide according to the law and not to impose his own will. For an orthodox judge, the law itself becomes the client.; 7/21/05, 1:08 PM
DaveG said...: Objection! Hearsay.; 7/21/05, 1:42 PM
Ann Althouse said...: DaveG: Overruled. Party admission.; 7/21/05, 2:11 PM
TBMD said...: I thought that's what lawyers did - argue for their clients. I'm assuming that some lawyers won't represent some clients for moral, personal, or ethical reasons, but the bar seems to be set pretty low. Isn't Ramsey Clark representing Saddam Hussein? It's a shame that Johhny Cochran couldn't make this one ("if the WMD don't fit, you must Aquit").; 7/21/05, 5:00 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: I think that as an attorney, you should be able to argue both sides of the case.

In Con Law, our prof caused a revolt of the feminists by asking that they argue the anti-abortion side. They grieved him, led by the woman who had the high grade in the class. The panel decided for the prof - no harm, no foul.

In any case, I thought that they were being extremely silly about the whole thing. Maybe you might not take either side of any issue, but you are almost guaranteed to to better if you can argue the other side.; 7/21/05, 8:37 PM
Wade Garrett said...: I believe Roberts when he says that. I saw David Boies give a speech at Yale Law School a couple of years ago, in which he said that he could have represented the other side in every major case he'd ever had. He said that, when preparing his own arguments, he had to look into the arguments the other side would be making, and in so doing he got to know the other party's case as well as his own. I suspect that this is common among litigators of that skill level.; 7/21/05, 9:27 PM
Wade Garrett said...: I always though that the point of being a litigator was to serve your client, whoever that client may be. Those idelogy-driven lawyers who actively seek out people to represent in order to further their own personal goals . . . aren't those people the reason most regular Americans hate lawyers?; 7/22/05, 6:16 AM
Wade Garrett said...: I wonder what this approach says about Roberts' willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade. If he does in fact treat settled law as the client, then the religious right wing of the party could be very disappointed.; 7/22/05, 6:19 AM