Supreme Ambitions (14 page)

So while the notion of writing a bench memo with a particular conclusion in mind troubled me somewhat, I thought to myself: Judge Stinson is my judge—a federal appeals court judge, nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and boasting years of experience in both practice and on the bench. I'm just a law clerk, less than a year out of law school, who passed the bar exam just a few months ago. Who am I to question her?

Superhotties of the Federal Judiciary: Judge Christina Wong Stinson

By Article III Groupie

 

“Va-va-voom!” Is that the sound of Judge Stinson's red Jaguar? Actually, no—it was what a BTR reader wrote when enthusiastically nominating Judge Stinson in our contest to find the most pulchritudinous federal judges in all the land. This half-Asian hottie combines “fantastic bone structure” with a “rocking body,” showcased quite nicely by her “elegant and expensive ensembles.” She can easily afford the fabulous fashions of Armani and Chanel: her husband, super-agent Robert Stinson, is one of Hollywood's wealthiest and most well-connected power brokers. He also has strong ties to the Republican Party—which could help Judge Stinson's Supreme Court candidacy, discussed previously in these pages. If confirmed to SCOTUS, this luscious litigatrix would be the first Asian American justice—and the hottest member of the high court.

But does some of that hotness come from the fiery breath of this dragon lady? Word on the street is that Judge Stinson can be something of a judicial diva: temperamental, manipulative, and less than delightful to work for. Sometimes she fires law clerks mid-year, an almost unheard of practice. But even if she's hard on her clerks, she's definitely easy on the eyes!

Will this “lovely lotus blossom” flower into a Supreme Court justice? That's not as clear as her alabaster skin, but here's one thing that's certain: given her beauty, supporters of cameras in the courtroom at One First
Street would love to see President LaFount go the Wong way.

 

Xoxo,

Article III Groupie

 

After Judge Stinson told us to keep an eye on Beneath Their Robes in the wake of its mention of her as a possible Supreme Court nominee, I set up a Google alert to inform me of new BTR posts. So I read this post nominating the judge in the blog's judicial “hotties” contest shortly after its publication—as did Judge Stinson, apparently, who summoned me to her office within minutes of the story going up.

When I entered her office, the judge was standing rather than seated, holding a printout of the BTR story. The fact that she had bothered to print out the story struck me as amusing, and I was almost going to joke about it—but it was good that I didn't.

“Have you seen this?” she asked me, tossing the printout across her desk. I picked it up—remaining standing, because the judge was still standing—and nodded.

“Yes Judge,” I said sheepishly, not sure of the direction the discussion would take. “I received a Google alert when it went up … Congratulations?”

“Congratulations? On being a ‘lovely lotus blossom' with a ‘rocking body'? This story is sexist and racist, offensive and trivializing. How will I be taken seriously as a possible Supreme Court nominee with this kind of coverage?”

She had a point—which I could appreciate, as an ambitious Asian American woman myself. The world would always find ways to put us in our place, even taking an asset like physical attractiveness and turning it around on us. If we were too assertive, we were dragon ladies; if we were too submissive, we were geisha girls.

“You're absolutely right,” I said. “It is quite offensive. But who would take it seriously? The language is so over the top; it's clearly intended as humor, even if misguided humor.”

“But the comments about my appearance aren't the end of it,” she said, picking up the printout to read from it. “What about the claims that I'm a ‘dragon lady' and a ‘judicial diva,' and that I'm ‘temperamental, manipulative, and less than delightful to work for'? This is damaging to my reputation. It makes me out to be—please excuse the vulgarity—a bitch, for lack of a better word.”

There was, of course, some truth to these assessments. But I wasn't about to say so.

“It's just a blog, an anonymous gossip blog,” I said. “It's not worth worrying about. It's so far beneath you.”

“The problem is that it has what some might view as indicia of reliability—inside information. The fact that I drive a red Jaguar. That I wear Armani and Chanel. That I'm married to Robert. Where could this be coming from? It's not … you?”

“Of course not, Judge! I would never say such things about you!”

“I didn't think so—which is why I summoned you upon reading this. You don't think any of your co-clerks are behind these attacks on me, do you?”

Amit: too much of a suck-up, too ambitious, too risk-averse. James: too nice. Larry: too indifferent, too clueless.

“No, Judge. The story doesn't give information about sources—it just cites ‘word on the street'—but I wouldn't be surprised if it came from some of your prior clerks. Perhaps a clerk you didn't get along with, a clerk who turned in subpar work that you disapproved of, a clerk with an ax to grind.”

I recalled my orientation with Janet Lee when I first arrived in chambers, including her cryptic comments about how I'd find clerking for Judge Stinson to be “very interesting.” I didn't know Janet well enough to have a sense of whether she could have contacted Article III Groupie with dirt on the judge, but I could certainly imagine that there could be disgruntled ex-Stinson clerks out there. She could be a difficult boss sometimes, as all of us had witnessed at one point or another. This didn't mean she wasn't a good judge or a good boss overall; it was simply that
she, like so many successful and powerful people, had periods when she might be under stress and more challenging to deal with than usual.

“Audrey, I want to learn more about this Article III Groupie character, but I don't want to contact her myself. I'd like you to reach out to her and see what you can find out about her sources for these negative rumors. And even if it's just a gossip blog, it's clearly one that people are reading. So see what you can do to remedy my reputation.”

“Certainly, Judge. I'll email Article III Groupie and open up the channels of communication.”

“Oh, but one thing to note: don't mention that you're reaching out to her at my direction. I don't want my fingerprints on this. This should be coming from you as a concerned clerk who feels that her boss has been unfairly maligned.”

“Absolutely. I'll convey that I'm acting on my own—which is true. I
do
feel that you've been unfairly attacked, Judge, and I'm happy to do what I can to remedy that.”

“Thank you, Audrey. That means a great deal to me.”

Before I realized what was happening, Judge Stinson approached me and gave me a hug. I returned the embrace, awkwardly. It was exciting to be so appreciated by my boss, but it still felt … weird. You'd get a hug from your second-grade teacher when you left school for summer vacation, not from a prominent and well-respected judge and possible Supreme Court justice.

I was about to return to my office, but the judge motioned for me to sit down in one of the visitor's chairs in front of her desk. She then seated herself in the other visitor's chair, so we were sitting side by side, knees touching. She leaned in.

“Look, I'm not a fool,” she said softly. “I know that I can be … difficult.”

“Judge, I don't think you're at all …”

“No, you don't need to come to my defense. I know that I can be—what was the blog's term?—a ‘judicial diva' sometimes. I can be difficult, demanding, moody, and manipulative. I like to think that I'm not like
that all the time, or even most of the time, but I know I'm like that at least some of the time.”

I sat still, looking into the judge's dark brown eyes (which were quite lovely). She clearly did not want to be interrupted.

“But before people criticize me, they should think about where I'm coming from. They should walk a mile in my Manolos—and trust me, these heels are brutally high!”

I laughed, as the judge continued.

“As you may have already experienced in law school, and as you will learn during the rest of your legal career, it's not easy being a woman in our male-dominated profession. And it was even worse when I was coming up through the ranks, when there were many fewer women law students and lawyers compared to today. When I was on the law review at Berkeley, I was one of ten women—on a 50-person masthead.”

“It's not that much better today,” I said. “In my class, there were 15 women out of 50 editors.”

“That gender imbalance will follow you throughout the profession, Audrey. My starting associate class at Gibson Dunn was about a quarter women. It got worse over time, as my female colleagues relinquished their ambition, trading in law firm life for cushy in-house gigs or 9-to-5 nonprofit jobs or, of course, motherhood. And I could have done that too, left the law to become a stay-at-home mother—Robert was already making
tons
of money by that point—but that's not how I'm wired. I run toward challenges, not away from them.”

“So how many other women were in your partnership class at Gibson?”

“Other women? Ha! I was the only woman who made partner in my year; there were no women in the partner class before me, and no women in the partner class after. There was only one other woman even up for partnership in my year; she didn't make it, and I knew she wouldn't make it. She was an M&A lawyer, perfectly smart, but not tough enough. If you wanted to make partner as a woman back in those days, especially in litigation, you had to be a real hard-ass—meaner and more aggressive
than the men. Because otherwise you'd just get leered at and run over. You should have seen me at depositions; I'd go in there and be a raging bitch. Because if I wasn't, the men in the room would ask me to get them coffee. Or gawk at my—how did that blog put it?—my ‘rocking body.'”

I felt such deep admiration for Judge Stinson at that moment. And a new understanding for why she could sometimes be, well, difficult.

“So people need to understand where I'm coming from before they judge. To get where I am today, I had to spend years being tough, strident, and manipulative. That kind of behavior is ingrained in me. It's not something that I can just unlearn—and, to be honest, I'm not sure that I'd want to unlearn it. It's part of who I am, for better or worse.”

“So what advice would you give to young, ambitious women today?”

“To be a successful professional woman, you need to be a little monstrous.”

 

Later that afternoon, I sent my email to the author of the Beneath Their Robes blog.

Within an hour, I received a response from Article III Groupie:

 

Hi Audrey. Thanks for your message. I'm afraid I can't say more about my sources, who must remain anonymous to prevent retaliation, but I stand by my earlier reporting. I can assure you that my sources know just as much about Judge Stinson as you do.

While I have you here, let me ask you a few questions about Judge Stinson. You describe her as an “outstanding” judge. What's the basis of your opinion? Is it based on her intellect and her wisdom, as reflected in the quality of her opinions? If so, does she write them herself, or does she edit the work of her clerks? If she edits her clerks' work, how heavily does she edit? In other words, how engaged is she in the day-to-day work of judging? How involved does she get in the intricacies of legal analysis, writing, and editing—the central elements of judicial craft?

I eagerly await your responses to my queries. They will be helpful for purposes of my forthcoming profile of Judge Stinson and whether she truly would be, as you put it, a “superb” addition to the Supreme Court.

 

Xoxo,

A3G

 

So much for my foray into public relations. Article III Groupie hadn't just called my bluff; she had seen my bet and raised me. If I were to answer her questions, the answers would not be flattering to the judge—and A3G seemed to know this, with her gloating final paragraph, threatened exposé, and breezy sign-off. I feared that my attempt to rehabilitate Judge Stinson's reputation had actually made things worse.

What to do? I wished I had someone to discuss this with, but I really didn't; it was clearly something that Judge Stinson wanted kept between the two of us. In fact, I felt honored that she picked me out of all the clerks to handle this highly sensitive matter. I was arguably the natural choice as the only female clerk—the “hotties” post raised gender issues, and perhaps the judge felt that I, as a woman, would have a better chance of establishing a rapport with a female blogger—but I still viewed it as a vote of confidence.