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Rights and Remedies

Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I would like to thank my law clerks, Jennifer Chang, Winter King, Ajay Krishnan, Christopher Rickerd, and Scott Shuchart, for invaluable aid in preparing this speech, and my husband Stephen Berzon for his typically excellent "last read." Janice, Michael, and David Rubin and their families were gracious hosts during our visit to Louisiana. Finally, the administration, faculty, and students of the Law Center, an attentive and inquisitive audience, helped me think through these ideas a bit more.

Coming here to participate in a lecture series named in honor of Judge Alvin and Janice Rubin is, for me, an occasion of great personal significance. In the summer of 1968, my husband Stephen and I arrived for Stephen's clerkship with Alvin Rubin, then a district judge in New Orleans. Judge and Mrs. Rubin invited us to stay with them while we went apartment hunting, and continued throughout the year to be surrogate parents, inviting us to share holiday events and other special occasions with their family. I would visit chambers occasionally and meet Judge Rubin and Stephen for lunch.

I was at the time twenty-three years old. Alvin Rubin was the first federal judge-indeed, the first judge-I had ever met. I had not yet gone to law school, nor had I any plan to do so. I certainly had no thought that I would ever follow Alvin Rubin into the federal judiciary.

But life takes strange turns, and subliminal influences often take over when one is least expecting them. I spent that year quietly observing Judge Rubin's combination of wit and wisdom; of enormous intelligence, broad knowledge, and good common sense; of hard work and preservation of time for friends and family; and of a profound commitment to both individualized justice and the development of sound, well-articulated legal doctrine. Most of all, I recognized that a man of great depth with an unwavering commitment to making the world a better place had found fulfillment in the law. By the end of the year, both Stephen and I had absorbed a vision of a life worth living, as well as a sense that personal attributes and devotion, not family connections or social status, would determine whether one attained such a life.

So I have no doubt that when, a year later, I decided to apply to law school, Judge Rubin's model informed my choice. That he was a rare lawyer, and an even rarer judge, was something I learned only over the following years.

When I was nominated to the federal judiciary, Judge Rubin had, sadly, already passed away. I remember invoking his name at the first of my two lengthy confirmation hearings-the atmosphere surrounding judicial confirmation hearings was very different in 1998 and 1999 from what it had been in 1977, the year Judge Rubin was confirmed to the old Fifth Circuit-as the ideal to which I aspired as a judge, which indeed he was and is. While awaiting confirmation, I thought often that I would so have liked to be able to sit down with Judge Rubin if I ever reached the bench to ask him for a roadmap, a guidebook, to the role and life of a judge.

Then, when the Senate finally voted and I indeed became a judge, a box of educational materials arrived from the Federal Judicial Center to prepare me for my new endeavor. In the box was a several- years-old tape recording of a conversation among four federal court of appeals judges chosen for their wisdom and wide respect. Among those judges, thank goodness but not surprisingly, was Alvin Rubin. So I had my tutorial from Judge Rubin after all, about how to prepare for argument, how to choose and work with law clerks, and how to undertake the myriad other daily tasks that absorb judges as they try both to get through the caseload and to provide litigants wi...

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