The Supreme Court Ethics Scandal That Just Won't End

♪♪♪ Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of The Thinking Like a Lawyer podcast. My name is Katherine Urbino. I'm a senior editor at Above the Law. And today I'm joined by my colleague Chris Williams, also of The Above the Law. Welcome to the podcast, Chris. Whoo! You will notice our compatriot, Joe Patrice, is not here, so there'll be less sound effects and less annoyance, coincidentally. ♪♪♪ How's your weekends, Chris? It's a good weekend. I just got my second tattoo done. Ooh! Is it like deeply meaningful or just pretty art? It's deeply meaningful to someone. So, yeah, it's a... Are you doing someone? No. Maybe one day. Yeah, so it's a sakiya tattoo, it's like a traditional Cambodian style tattoo, and it's like a... It's supposed to be like a protection from, like, you know, bad luck, you know, and like that. It's nice. There was a... I did like a small little prayer ceremony before I got the tattoo, but I won't even pretend to know exactly what it's about. I'll either have to Google or ask the guy, like, yo... What is this? But it looks cool. And, you know, if I ever find a need to wear some Hoochi Daddy shorts, it'll peak out a little bit, so it'll be less. There you go. I mean, listen, I hate to admit that I am fairly superstitious, but I am, in fact, fairly superstitious. So, I think anything that can keep the evil spirits away is... I mean, what's the harm, right? Right. Right. Is the old, you know, the Nils Borer story about the Horseshoe? No. Oh, the... You have to catch... You have to turn it up the right side up so that it catches the luck. Otherwise, it goes on the ground. Is that what you're talking about? Or is there some other Horseshoe story? Well, it's intentionally related. So, Nils Borer, he was a scientist, and like, he had a barn, and he had a Horseshoe on it to, like, ward off that experience. But then, when if his friends came to his house, and he's like, you're a naturalist. You're a straight-up scientist, materialist. You don't believe in this shit. And he was like, yeah, I don't, but I was told that it works, even if you don't believe it. Yeah. So, I'm hoping it's the same thing on my tattoo. Like, somebody says it's protective. So, hopefully, that's good about it. Yeah. You know, I'll be honest. I think I've never realized how superstitious I am until I was pregnant. And then, everything was potentially bad luck. I think for the first... You know, you're not supposed to say anything for the first 12 weeks, and I didn't say anything for 20 weeks, because I kept on being like, I don't know. We should wait. Let's double check. Let's make... Let's really make sure. Let's wait until after this test or that test, because there's a lot of them. And every... I was like, this is just asking for trouble. Why are we spreading our good news? This is just... The universe is just gonna want to shit on us now. Keep it to yourself. Don't brag to the universe. The things are going well. So, I didn't know who prestigious was a thing until today, but now... No, I know. Super for the normies. Yeah. Leah, how about you? Yeah, well, I... You know, not coincidentally, since I am, in fact, almost to do with this baby, but spent a good portion of my weekend putting together baby furniture. Ooh. Okay, like baby I hear or... Well, we haven't... I became because it's bad luck to get this... Because it gets us crimped too early. I haven't come to the... Okay. Because then, you know, it's very bad luck. My friend's actually a very good friend of mine who was one of the people who threw my baby shower last weekend. She actually found a baby furniture store when she was pregnant that wouldn't deliver the furniture till after she had had the baby. So, she was from the hospital. She'd already purchased it and all that kind of stuff picked it out, went to the store, picked it out. And she called them from the hospital so that they would schedule delivery after... She actually gave birth because she thought it would be bad luck to have it in the house before she actually had the baby. So, I don't have the crib yet, but I did put together the swing, the bouncy seat, the playpen, all accoutrement that you apparently absolutely, positively must have for a newborn infant. Let me know when you put together the college fund out for like 10 or 20 bucks. Yeah, it's a grandma and grandpa joint, I think. But... That was cool. Well, I guess that's the end of our small talk. It's less fun to make fun of small talk when Joe's not here. I can't lie. But... He's complaining in spirit. You know, I think he's apparently very ill, so he's probably actually complaining at the moment as well. So, we just get added on to his current list of complaints. So, the first thing that we have on today's agenda is the New York Bar Exam. Apparently, you know, once you've already created the test and administered the test, you would think at that point the hard work of being, of administering the bar exam is over, right? People have taken the test, you've graded the test, you just have to let people know whether or not they passed. That can't be the hardest part. Right? What happened? It could be wrong. New York Bar Exam for the February test takers was supposed to send out the notification saying that at midnight there were results were available. However, when you actually plugged in your information, it was... you couldn't log in. Yeah, that would have tormented me, because I don't know about anybody else, but I was one of those people that had nightmares about failing a class after I had already graduated from the institutions. So, I woke up to collect, oh shit, I've missed it. Oh, I already got the JD. They can't get back. Well, apparently in Texas they can. So, apparently folks spent the majority of the evening, or not evening, because they don't actually let you know until midnight. I don't know why they've decided that that is the right time to find out, because only good things happen after midnight, right? That's when you can log in to find out whether or not, and anybody who had a JD was unable from an American institution, apparently, was unable to log in, but folks who were LLM folks, they were able to log in to find out whether or not they passed. But you could apparently find out, you could register for the next administration of the Bar Exam. You could do that. You just couldn't find out whether or not you'd actually passed. So, they were still accepting money for the next test. Correct. Great. People were like losing their, I mean, rightfully losing their shit saying, is this like a subtle way that they're trying to tell me that I failed the exam? Like, you sure you want the grades? We can give you a sign of register. I mean, that lets you show us a company that has its priorities and share it with us, paying us all schedule results. Yeah, they've got that on lockdown. I know our colleague Joe wrote about it initially. And, you know, query, why after midnight is when it's released? Why not 9 a.m.? Why not in the middle of the day at some point? Because I think that all of the phone calls started going to an automated voice messaging services because they were not available to help people troubleshoot these issues. And we were aware of the issues and working on it, but we're not, no one was available to take people's, probably I rate phone calls. Yeah, I think at some point you have to just accept that people do things out of spite. And releasing them at a time where there's literally no mechanism for like feedback outside of like mean Twitter posts, that's deliberate. Yeah. I mean, so when I, when I had a login to find out when I passed the New York bar, it was, I didn't see it, I didn't have the big picture, you know, at that point in my legal career. And it felt like, I'm like, oh, they're giving us plenty of time to drink before we find out our results. And then plenty of hours still left before the bars close at 4 a.m. in New York City. So that's, that's kind of how I took it. I was like, oh, you're giving me a chance to celebrate and or drown my sorrows. I will to be doing probably some combination of those things. It was a bit of a debacle that, that, you know, folks are dealing with. But now, now you know, now everyone knows whether or not they've passed the bar exam. So congratulations to those who, well, I don't know how good the bar passage rates were. Around the country, they have just not been where they have been historically. One of the, one of the fun things I think, fun and like that cool, abstract, terrifying way. I do think that like, as we see, like, AI continue to progress. Like we can start to see properly, like human things, you become more absolute, absolute, absolute, absolute, active, right? So we're already at a point where AI tends to get a better score in the bar exam than humans. So it's like, it has to be like a new level of pain. Well, they, AI is able to pass. I don't know that it's better scores, but they are able to pass, but that's all you need. That's all you need. That's all you need to have your, to be honest. For the amount of people that fail, the AI is doing better than a lot of people. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. The AI is doing better than a lot of people. We have a different guest each month as we bring to life this diverse area of the law. Join us on Workers' Comp Matters on the Legal Talk Network. Today's legal news is rarely as straightforward as the headlines that accompany them. On lawyer-lawyer, we provide legal perspective. You need to better understand the current events that shape our society. Join me, Craig Williams, and a wide variety of industry experts as we break down the top networks. Follow a lawyer-to-lawyer on the Legal Talk Network or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The Clarence Thomas ethics scandal continues a pace. I think the latest... Which should be clear. We can't talk about that because it will be racist. No. Oh, okay. I was going to say Ted Cruz appears to have inserted himself in the conversation. What's going on with him? Everyone, is it a cinder, cinder, Texas? Yeah. Yeah. I stopped caring what role we had in office once I realized that he was in the crisis in Texas and he was getting a flight to Tancun. Like once somebody just leaves their authorities like that capacity, it's hard to give them an honorific. But anyway, Zodiac killer... The voters in Texas continue to do that. Power to them. Power to them. Yeah. As a non-techness resident, that guy, he recently called out the understandable first-year tech people have had for Clarence Thomas having a sugar daddy for 20 years while still in the court and sitting on bribery case. Right. He got luxury travel from Harlan Crow amongst some other gifts throughout the years. Yeah. A bunch of goofy stuff. Like one of the last things that he reported before, he stopped reporting. It was like a $20,000 Bible that used to belong to Frederick Douglass, I think. Like just a lot of stuff. Crow donated a statue that was dedicated to I think like some of the nuns that raised him, he like bought his mother's property. So he's technically his friend's landlord. A lot of stuff. His friend's mom's landlord without charging her rent though. Don't worry. Yeah. And so... Completely above-board stuff. Normal. Things buddies do. Things buddies do. You know, like who among us doesn't have a friend that's given us, you know, $500,000 worth of... You get the points for decades. And this has been happening for decades. There are articles from like 2004 calling out Justice Thomas' lavish gift receiving, which is fine in of itself, but he's not reporting it. Right. And of course that makes it hard to trust that a person is being transparent when all this undisclosed amounts of money is flowing from somebody's box to his. And he's not doing the simple thing of just saying it, which he's required to by law, all his other colleagues have been doing it. So it really looks weird for anybody to add one now. Yeah. I mean, I think that what was Clarence's excuse for not reporting the real estate transaction, he said, well, I didn't make a profit on it. So I didn't think I had to report it. Although now he said that he's going to amend those disclosures, which is, you know, at the very least, did acknowledgement that he in fact has to make those disclosures. Yeah. And for the other stuff, when the press... What did Chris do in all this? Oh, you know, like... Yeah, it was a story. I think he just checkers over those people where he's like itching to get like a good, a good feeling like public eye. I remember I think there was one, there was one story where he said a thing that he immediately went to Twitter to see what his polls were. I think this was just what this was the same thing. He just wanted to be involved with having something to say about Clarence Thomas. He said that this is nothing more than people being mad at Clarence Thomas for having the audacity to be a back Republican. And no, it's the law breaking. Sorry. They know, like it's the 20 years of a person in a high position of authority and influence showing away at that, but then holding people accountable. Like it's a really bad look for him to still be sitting on a bribery case, you know? Like there are many things you could point to and be like, oh, he just happens to be black, which I wish Clarence Thomas would also say. Like this has nothing to do with his race. That's the fact that, you know, he's broke the law egregiously for decades, you know? I'm pretty sure it would hurt a little more for me to do, but I write the same type of thing of sort of my or or God forbid, Tataji Jackson were caught doing the same things. And it's wild seeing like how the threshold for what counts as acceptable action has changed over the decades. What was it? Was it a fortus? The prior justice who resigned, who resigned over $20,000. He gave the money back. And I was like, yeah, you can't do this, bro. He's like, yeah, he right. And then to go from that to Justice Thomas saying, oh, my friend said it was cool. Like, come on. Yeah, even accounting for inflation and whatnot, it is a stark difference in the amount of money that we're talking about as well. No, we live in some corrupt times. Which is, I mean, they've always been corrupt. Don't get it twisted, but this is like super corrupt. Like, can we at least keep up appearances? You know? Yeah, you know, it is it is interesting. And I know a judge Ho James Ho also made comments sort of brushing off the severity of this ethics scandal for Clarence Thomas. But but you remember the line is the mere appearance of impropriety. We are trying to avoid it. It doesn't even have to be improper has to appear a little bit improper for it to be bad. And we have blown completely by that past that and want to see, you know, oh, it's only a problem if he explicitly promised why result for X amount of dollars. It's it's real difference. And it's also just interesting to see like across the like just different areas of politics, how people get mad at things. I remember there was once a time where people got mad at the president for wearing a tan suit. You know, I'm like, remember when people were mad at a bump or in a tan suit, but to go from a sitting justice over. That was also disingenuous though. So I don't know if you were actually mad about it. Yeah, but also again, like the the the the the the threshold was so loud. Like, even when I used to have like anyway, well, I mean, it was, you know, there were reasons. And also not necessarily just really well. So name was like John Corin being like, Oh, everybody does this. Imagine if you ask all the senators, R.C. personal gifts, personal hospitality, that doesn't make it better. Right. Like the defenses to this have just been like, Oh, this is more. It's telling on yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a it's a hard time to believe in the rule of law, really. Yeah. You know, welcome to the year of our Lord 2023 friends. They say the best things in life are free, which either means the legal toolkit podcast is pretty awesome or we're totally committed to the wrong business model. You'll just have to tune in to find out which it is. I'm Jared Korea and each episode I run the risk of making a total ass of myself so that you can have a laugh, learn something new and why not maybe even improve your law practice. Not believing podcast can't be both fun and helpful. Subscribe now to the legal toolkit. Go ahead. I'll wait. The digital edge podcast where the law and technology intersect. I'm Sharon Nelson and together with Jim Callaway, we invite professionals from all fields to discuss the latest trends, tips and tools within the legal industry. Stay up to date on the rapidly changing legal tech landscape with the digital edge on the legal talk network. Okay. Well, we did get some slight good news at the end of last week. The Supreme Court issued a stay in the abortion pill case, meaning that the very, very questionable decision of Matthew Kasmarik that was at least in part upheld by the Fifth Circuit will no longer be in effect while it goes through the appeal process and the abortion pill will be as available as it's ever been during the appeal process. It was done by an apparent vote of 72 and with Clarence Thomas publicly dissenting and not joining the written dissent though that Samuel Alito wrote but dissenting as well. We believe it's a 72 decision. But Alito got big mad about the decision and his opening paragraphs of his dissent call out three of the four female members of the court for things that they have said about the shadow docket. Although Amy Coney Barrett is the third woman on the court. They get some of his ire because Justice Jackson hasn't had nearly enough time on the court to write stuff about the shadow docket. But he calls out, you know, Kaykin, listen, Elena Kaykin has been very vocal about her opposition to the shadow docket and the way that the court has increased its use of this sort of extra judicial mechanism for lawmaking as has so to my war. But I think that the key difference here that Alito refuses to acknowledge is that by issuing the stay they keep the law the same, they keep the access to the abortion pill which is incredibly commonly prescribed in this country and incredibly safe as well. It keeps it going. It doesn't, it's quite the opposite that it isn't lawmaking but rather preventing this kind of bizarre extra judicial lawmaking by people like Judge Kasmaric from Texas. What was your immediate reaction to it being seven two? I mean, not surprised. I mean, I guess, you know, that's those are the people who publicly dissented it could have been a slightly different, you know, breakdown. But I think that Judge Kasmaric's decision is wildly out of line with even Republican talking points about abortion. I also think that if allowed, if that decision goes through the Fifth Circuit and comes up to the court and they kind of endorse it, then I think we don't have a functional FDA in this country because we don't get cancer drugs anymore. I think that those sorts of repercussions are things that someone like Amy Coney Barrett probably cares a lot about. So I think that this is bigger than just the talking point, the pro-life talking point. But you know, I'm quietly optimistic that this will not be a bad decision because it will come back around. The stage just means that you continue to have access to the drug in the status quo, the same way you did before Kasmaric got involved. It doesn't mean that at the end of the appeal stage that this doesn't come before the court of the Supreme Court again. I think it's highly likely that it does come before the Supreme Court again. And we'll see what they do with it there. But it is at least encouraging that there appear to be a few votes in support of the federal drug administration. You know, this is how we've done things for a really long time. And I think that those who want to watch the world burn don't particularly care or aren't really concerned with what the repercussions are. But I think that they will be, I think they will be vast. You know, things are bad when big farmers like, hey, you know, there was like a list of like a bunch of like farmer super, farmer super company CEOs that got involved. It was like, oh, yeah, there's too much money in this. Yeah, I mean, the decision would completely unwork the entire way that drugs get approved in our country. It would be, it would be wild in the worst way imaginable. I think that that has a lot to do with why it was, why we have the current stay and why I don't necessarily think it is an easy conservative victory. Should have come back to the Supreme Court. You know, for generations, conservatives made their nut by pointing out that they were on the side of big business. You know, big farmer was their big friend. You know, and I think that this really complicates the situation. It's like, Chris Christie recently went on the attack against Ron DeSantis because of Ron DeSantis's sort of vendetta against Disney saying, you know, I thought we were, I thought we were conservatives that the Republicans were on pro business. This is not pro business. This is a personal, this is personal. This is not, this is what I thought liberals did. This is not what conservatives do. I think that there's this kind of push and pull, you know, in the far right movement right now between these policy goals that the more religious, more side of the party want to do when those that have just been pro business and they're the ones that have been funding it for, that's where the money is. So it'll be interesting to see how it all gets squared away. Yeah, I think there's a, there's some trouble brewing between the religious right and the religious right to profit. I think, I think, but yeah, I think it all, the butt heads on the issue of a boy. I'm just waiting for there to be a religious gun case because that'll be hard. Like who do you support in that incident? Now you're right in the church and I'm just looking forward to not looking forward like the optimistic, but just like these will be interesting times. What I wouldn't give to live in some precedented times these days. Can a thing be precedented for just a term? Good for you. You're so precedent. Oh yeah. No, we've seen this before. This makes a lot of sense. For once that to be my reaction to some news story. Oh, that, that, that makes sense. Not like, oh, what, what, what is the right wing going to do when they have, you know, their, their anti abortion crusade come to a loggerhead with their support of big business. Who wins in that one? Because I don't think it's us. Yeah. I mean, I wonder how many cases it'll be in social media. You know what, other countries look good. It's some of those things you can stand about. I mean, all right. Well, it seems like we are running low on time, but you should definitely check us out. We're on Twitter at at atlblog. I'm on Twitter at Catherine one. Chris is on Twitter at the number one because it's on Twitter at Rice for Rent. You should definitely be reading our stories at above the law. You can kind of get a preview about some of our bigger stories are before we start talking about them on the podcast. You should be checking out the rest of the podcast on the Legal Talk network, as well as the Jibo podcast, which is an interview show that I host about diversity in the law. I think that that is all the things that Joe makes a really big deal about at the end of the show. But those are the things that have to be touched on. So have a great day, y'all. See you next time. 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