The Return

I have to admit that I am a T**** trial news junkie. Each morning, I listen to the podcasts of MSNBC commentators from the night before, including the weekly update called “Prosecuting Donald T*****”. On Saturday, I listen to four amazing women attorneys-the #SistersInLaw-discuss what has happened in the week’s legal news, which always includes at least some news about the T**** trials. Sundays I catch “Jack”, the podcast about the cases being led by special prosecutor Jack Smith. And I treat myself to two weekly podcasts focused more generally on the Supreme Court, “Amicus” with former Charlottesville resident Dahlia Lithwick and “Strict Scrutiny,” which features three women who are Constitutional Law professors. They tear into the Court and its culture with some of the fastest-talking, legally astute and show-no-mercy commentary around.

A bit much, you say. I agree, but I come at this obsessive behavior somewhat honestly. I studied the law, many long years ago, and was really good at being a law student. As it turned out, I practiced for only a short time before life intervened with circumstances that led me to a career with less stress and more time to raise my kids.

But that “legal eagle” is still inside me, and as I listen to the myriad legal discussions to which Mr. T**** has given rise, I still feel a part of the “club”, or, increasingly, the “sisterhood” of legal minds out there trying to make sense of it all.

This week, I read the opinion of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denying T****’s claim of immunity. Skipping over the jurisdictional section (dense) I read the court’s thorough and devastating disembowelment of T****’s arguments. It took me back to my favorite parts of law school, when I would read the cases and see how the really skillful judges would interweave the words of legal precedent (prior cases) with their own words to create principles that would then become precedent for future cases. I even got a chance to do this myself, in preparing a brief to argue before stand-in judges in Moot Court. Loved the briefing, hated the arguing. In British terms, a solicitor, not a barrister.

But at heart, my interest in these cases rests in my hope that there will be accountability for this man who is trying to ruin the country I love. I do believe it will happen (accountability, that is), but it will take many years, probably beyond my lifetime, for our country to heal from the wounds he has made in the body politic.

Studying the law made me at turns profoundly cynical and enormously grateful. My daily fixes from the commentators who share my vision of America help me to believe that there will continue to be much to be grateful for as this year progresses.