Actually, Hawley's line of attack is silly and no evisceration occurred.
I'm all for trying to put Jones Day outside of public respectability, but how is this any different from the plagiarism stuff where being black gets a woman kicked out for things are written off as just normal background noise for those in the same type of position who aren't black?
I wasn't too upset with OJ being acquitted either, so I guess I can't argue with that.
I was upset with that. But Hawley wasn't the prosecutor.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle motion.
What Moby said. If you want to say that working for a big law firm should place you outside the pale for judgeships, fine, that's a set of beliefs, but it's at the same level of connection to anything that's likely to happen as "first, we end capitalism."
If working for a big law firm makes you contemptible for Black lawyers, women, and Democrats, but it's fine for white guys, and it's also the only job prestigious enough to prepare you to be a federal judge, then that's going to have some fairly obvious results.
I think the post title speaks for itself on that score. I just really hate the elite law argument that they're upholding the finest traditions of Anglo-Saxon law by taking a jillion dollars from Blackwater.
Anyway, if anyone asks me about my jobs, I'll remember ogged and defend it on the grounds of that's who could pay me enough that I can retire at 65.
It's pretty rich to see that piece of shit Hawley giving someone a hard about working for Jones Day, with all its Trumpiness. The Democrats should force Hawley to cast a bunch of votes against the working class, to cut off his "regular people" rhetoric. But of course that would mean the Democrats would have to propose popular measures in favor of the working class.
I agree with LB that there shouldn't be a double standard about these things. But if the Democrats feel a bit more pressure to nominate judges who haven't worked at toxic firms, that's not bad.
The Democrats should force Hawley to cast a bunch of votes against the working class, to cut off his "regular people" rhetoric. But of course that would mean the Democrats would have to propose popular measures in favor of the working class.
LOOKS LIKE THOSE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS ARE AT IT AGAIN
WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS
7:
Surely the point is that this notion of "prestigious" is not a good one.
(I guess you end up in the situation that Republican judges come from the partners in big firms, and Democratic judges come from the ranks of all other lawyers. This doesn't seem like the worst possible situation).
7:
Surely the point is that this notion of "prestigious" is not a good one.
(I guess you end up in the situation that Republican judges come from the partners in big firms, and Democratic judges come from the ranks of all other lawyers. This doesn't seem like the worst possible situation).
It would certainly put a stop to this sort of person getting a judgeship.
In 1984, she entered private practice, joining the commercial litigation practice group of Pavia & Harcourt in Manhattan as an associate. One of 30 attorneys in the law firm, she specialized in intellectual property litigation, international law, and arbitration. Her clients were mostly international corporations doing business in the United States; much of her time was spent tracking down and suing counterfeiters of Fendi goods
Or this one:
She spent a year in private practice at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin (now part of Baker Botts), then clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer from 1999 to 2000.
She returned to private legal practice at the law firm of Goodwin Procter, one of the largest law firms in the world, from 2000 to 2002, then under Kenneth Feinberg at the law firm now called Feinberg & Rozen LLP from 2002 to 2003
14: If it worked out like that, fine, but can we see the shaming big-firm partners including Democratic white men? Because focusing on the hypocrisy of being a Black woman Democrat who took a high prestige job working for bad (which is to say, rich) people, suggests that all the Republicans and a big part of the Democrats who get nominated for judgeships are going to have what are now conventionally recognized as high-status, normal for a judge, resumes. But candidates who have to demonstrate they're not hypocrites are going to have to come up with alternative demonstrations of status, which are trickier to cobble together, and then are going to open them up to being regarded as objectively less well-qualified.
Again, what Moby said about Claudine Gay. Not even that there was absolutely nothing to the accusations against her -- I'm told by my academic sources that while most of the things pointed out were complete bullshit, some of them were things where you'd really tell a grad student "don't do that, that was unacceptably sloppy work." But there was absolutely nothing that anyone would have dreamed of calling career-ending, or that anyone would have considered scandalous decades later, if Black women weren't held to a standard where they have to be perfect or they're frauds.
It would be pretty great if there was a parallel Labor lawyer track that was equally prestigious.
But, otherwise, I agree with Moby. Still pissed about. Claudine Gay being pushed out. I get all these e-mail on behalf of Garber, who, btw, is a big union buster, about the terrible scourge of antisemitism at Harvard. It's all equating DEi with antisemitism.
And yes, Ogged, obviously you know that Hawley is a racist doing a hit job on a Black woman, you called him a tool, which is completely sufficient to establish that you in no way at all support that aspect of it. When you called it a righteous evisceration, you meant it only in the sense that it is righteous aimed at her and equally at all the powerful white lawyers nominated for judgeships and other positions of power.
Maybe put up a post stating the general rule? Lawyers who worked for bad clients in private practice should be regarded as unfit for public service? Or however you think it should work.
17: It's not that there are absolutely no high-prestige/clean-hands career tracks: it's possible -- someone like Dale Ho was I think in lefty organizations rather than private practice all the way up. There are just a whole lot fewer spots like that, because there's so much less money funding that kind of thing than there is doing high prestige work for rich people. So lawyers generally recognized as the best of the profession are going to overwhelmingly, by the numbers, be people who spent some time in private practice on the way up.
I work in a government office, and specifically in a bureau with a do-goodery mission. But I don't work with anyone with clean hands, because we only hire lawyers with experience, and they get that in private practice.
(Also, hooray for a return to trolling the blog!)
Ogged has kind of lost his subtlety when it comes to trolling his own blog, it has to be said. This is kind of Michael Moore level.
This is going to sound insane, but...I didn't realize she was Black. She looks just like a brilliant Indian coworker, so that's how I had her slotted, not that it makes much difference. Just saying, I did a double take when reading the comments.
Anyway, I don't have a general rule and I realize the world we live in is one in which smart young lawyers are going to represent private equity and whatever else. I just really want them not to say that "everyone deserves vigorous representation." I think Hawley is just right--no matter how disingenuous--that people have a choice, and they choose money and prestige. Or most people do.
Rereading the post, I think that was actually pretty clear! Just don't pretend you're upholding the noble tradition.
At a minimum celebrating a proper evisceration certainly needs to include taking into account the context the actual behavior and positions of the eviscerator. Enough said on Hawley, would love to see where he stood on the Puerto Rican debt crisis at the time*. Stoller may have more credibility on this particular line of attack (although he has been on the Hawley true man of the people train it seems ), but in looking up his positions I also realized that in my mind I had thoroughly conflated him with David Sirota (I think I am a strong "fuck 'em both").
*Hawley does seem to have his name on some quixotic stuff with Warren etc., like going after failed bank execs comp, but his actual voting record and lockstep with the Rs on everything thst actually matters should carry far more weight.
You don't necessarily meaningfully have a choice in private practice; even for partners, the choices are more like "get a different kind of job" than "individually pick your clients". Solo practitioners can handpick their clients (to the extent they can afford it), big-firm lawyers, even partners, are more likely to be working on the basis of client relationships with the firm.
(And I think you're probably right about her ethnicity -- I believe her family is from the Caribbean, but that could perfectly well mean Indian origin, and come to think that's what her name looks like. Everything I said still applies.)
I mean, I absolutely know that. Some of my best friends, etc. Hell, I worked in "Fintech." But I like to think my friends wouldn't pull the "everyone deserves" line.
If you want to be a judge, you don't have a choice other than choosing prestige, and there's not a lot of prestige out there for lawyers that doesn't involve big firm practice for generally bad clients. Some, but not a lot. Lots of people don't choose money and prestige, and they're generally not viable candidates for the federal bench.
On the "everyone deserves vigorous represention" point; look, you believe that for criminals, right? The system doesn't work unless guilty people can hire reputable lawyers. Similarly, the financial/economic system doesn't work unless people doing legal business can hire reputable lawyers. There is certainly unethical lawyering work out there, but drawing a consistently defensible line around "don't work for bad people" isn't workable.
19: Right, but if we could build Big Labor, there might be entry-level jobs that weren't do-gooder non-profits so much as a countervailing force.
26: you mean, it's not the same as being a public defender for an indigent murder suspect?
Some, but not a lot
Some! A high-school acquaintance is now a federal judge and never did big firm work; all public or public interest stuff.
And I'm so glad you've persisted until we have something to argue about.
the financial/economic system doesn't work unless people doing legal business can hire reputable lawyers
Of course this is purely hypothetical, because the money will always find people, but hypothetically, this might be fine. The world would look very different if firms who were...what's the word here for whatever was happening in Puerto Rico? Not shady or dodgy...maybe just "ick"? Anyway, it would be different if those firms had trouble finding representation, and it's not clear to me that it would be worse.
But even that extreme position aside, those firms get _the best_ lawyers. And then those best lawyers say, hey, you believe in our legal system dontchya? Ick!
There's also a professional responsiblity/ethical valence to the "vigorous representation" wording. I have, and so does she, a license which means that I'm not allowed to represent a client other than zealously. If I'm working for someone other than to the best of my ethical abilities, I'm not living up to my professional responsibilities. So expecting her to hedge about how sure, she worked for bad people but she shouldn't have: taking the client is by the definition of her profession a commitment to vigorous representation.
Working in Fintech, you might not have a feel for the obligations professional responsibility imposes.
The more general principle of the appropriateness of harshly judging lawyers for who they represent is one I have struggled with in regard to Trump attorneys. One the one hand I think it a pretty good general rule but I find myself waiving it for people like Steve Sedow, Trump's Georgia attorney. It may well just be motivated reasoning on my part, but I see them as knowing participants in an all out assault on the judicial system. We can all bang on about Fani Willis' poor judgment, but she is doing it in the context of trying to pursue justice in the face of a massive ongoing threats and intimidation.
Lowest circle of hell for guys like Sedow.
those best lawyers say, hey, you believe in our legal system dontchya
Increasingly, my answer is, "not really." Judging by the outcomes we get - and the time and expense it takes to get them - it really doesn't seem to be doing a very good job.
29: See, this is demented. You're saying "whatever was happening in Puerto Rico" because you have no specific idea what it was or what work Jones Day did or what work she did in Jones Day. But you're proposing finding people unfit for public service on the basis of a vague "ick" reaction as the line between what work is okay and what's contemptible.
you're proposing finding people unfit for public service
I haven't said this even a little bit. In fact, I've said several times that the One Thing that bothers me is hiding behind the "everyone deserves vigorous representation" line. I just want these people to take responsibility for their actions.
Funny story about working in Fintech (it was really an established company moving into fintech) but we were at some meeting about the company's mission and some guy got honest to god teary about how his mom had lost her life savings to bad investments and he wanted to be sure it didn't happen to anyone else. You just never know what's going to be a sincere motivator for people.
Also, let me be clear: I have absolutely no idea what the substance of Hawley's attack was, or what happened in Puerto Rico. I just hate all these people. And you should too!
Hawley is obviously not sincerely motivated and I'm not about to take any criticism he puts out as serious.
This is funny because everyone is convinced I'm trolling and looking for a fight, but I just wanted to rant! Do you not hate these people? Achievement culture really turns out a lot of moral monsters.
People who don't seek put achievement are not considered for the federal judiciary and the for the federal judiciary is something I'm very concerned about.
I was waiting for PR review and now I have to get back to work. I've enjoyed our respectful and mutually beneficial interactions in the great tradition of debate and the free exchange of ideas.
38: If you just wanted to rant about capitalism, don't call Josh Hawley righteous for trying to keep a woman of color with a conventional legal career off the bench. Rant about how law firms that don't choose their clients ethically should be pariahs or something like that, I might agree with you.
But Hawley is absolutely not righteous here.
41: I really do miss this sort of thing.
You should troll more!
I just hate all these people. And you should too!
This is exactly the effect that people like Hawley are shooting for, and how they find allies in people like Stoller.
Drain the swamp!
44: Exactly. Republicans are what they are, and they're not hypocrites because they're not pretending to do good. Anyone trying to actually work for the public good, on the other hand, is contemptible and disgusting if they haven't been a lifelong plaster saint.
I have absolutely no idea what the substance of Hawley's attack was, or what happened in Puerto Rico. I just hate all these people. And you should too!
Why would you jump straight to hating the non-Republicans without engaging with the substance of the charge?
I get Ogged's point, and there is something a little eye-rolling about asserting righteousness about the representation of the unrighteous. I say this as someone who's represented folks with black hats, at various times for various reasons (money, experience, team-play with colleagues). This doesn't excuse platforming the unrighteous, with whom we are currently involved in a death struggle. You can 'well actually, they kind of have a point about maintaining good email security' yourself right into a gulag.* No one is obligated to utter every fool thing -- or every true thing -- that pops into their heads.
This was a bad faith attack on the nominee. We should keep our hate for the very small flaw in her response to it to ourselves.
* This was much harder to believe in 2016 -- when it was clear you could 'well actually' yourself into having Roe overturned, an issue that was a primary motivator for a huge number of the other side's voters -- but the actual wholesale rejection of the rule of law seemed pretty far out. Correctly, I think. Not so today.
47.b: Agree, but we are among friends here.
This is going to sound insane, but...I didn't realize she was Black. She looks just like a brilliant Indian coworker, so that's how I had her slotted
She's from Trinidad, which has a massive Indian population (and a fairly large mixed population). What that makes her under the bonkers US system of racial classification I have no idea. She's probably black, like King Charles III. (One-drop rule, African Muslim ancestor.)
Yeah, I think I was probably wrong about her ethnicity -- I knew Trinidad and thought Black without thinking about her name.
Computer people are often insufficiently exposed to the humanities so they can miss things about the political culture.
Speaking of judicial nominees, just so demoralizing to see enough Dems aligning against Adeel Mangi to tank his nomination.
Just a gift to Rs on several different fronts. Catherine Cortez Masto cited his loose assoy some victim-support groups. I'm sure yhe othe usual suspects will oppose as well. R side is all hate and demagoguery (I think ones aked him if he celebrated 9/11).
Teitter thread:
https://x.com/jbendery/status/1770824846986866885?s=46&t=qd8I3ZXUD2bzNhzE_AtTxA
"assoy" -> "association with"
The flat out Islamophobia did not bring in any Dems but it looks like the cop-killer stuff will.
Looking forward to ogged issuing a retraction, in which he acknowledges that one does not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Josh Hawley.
54: how can you say that. Some of his best friends are Indian!
She looks just like a brilliant Indian coworker, so that's how I had her slotted
I don't think it's fair to go too hard after working for big law for the reasons that LB lays out.
That said, I don't think there's a moral equivalency between defending criminal individuals and defending corporations doing bad things. The justice system really does mean that murderers need some lawyer, whereas giant corporations are just doing a balancing act where they choose to do sketchy stuff because the know they have great lawyers. The world would be worse if murderers didn't have vigorous defense, and would be better if corporations had somewhat worse lawyers or had to spend more money to get lawyers for bad behavior.
Trinidad is about 30% Indian, because Indian labor was imported after the British slave trade ended (an event marked every year by the holiday "Indian Arrivals Day.") Indians in Trinidad tend to be wealthier than the Black population and thus more likely to have kids who grow up to be lawyers.
The thing is, I don't see how to draw a line that gets corporations somewhat worse lawyers. Good lawyering isn't discovering new physics, there's plenty of people who can do an equally competent job for the money. You make working for big corporations less prestigious (I don't really see how to do this, but it's certainly conceptually possible) but that just means they'll hire lawyers who are motivated solely by money rather than prestige. They'll be shadier, but probably not less competent.
I don't see a better way to control bad corporate behavior than by straightforwardly regulating them. Crafty lawyering can do a lot, but it doesn't make regulation go away.
58: I think to the extent you can make this a legit argument, it's not about what such corporations will be able to do, but rather how easy a time people will have jumping from that work to political positions and other public influence.
I could imagine a wall of ill regard keeping those money-motivated and competent people still doing the work as you say, but with those people not expecting to become judges or legislators. Which could have some value.
Oh, sure. Like, I've been saying all along that if you want working for black-hat rich clients (which at this point is synonymous with working for a big law firm) to be an effective bar on public service, or at least to be understood as a shameful stain on the resume to be overcome, that could be fine. What got me mad is Josh Hawley pretending that that's the rule but only when it applies to a Democratic woman of color, and Ogged pretending that anyone would take a rule like that seriously as applied across the board, including to white men and Republicans.
I also miss this kind of argument!! Good job, Ogged.
I have to laugh that the Atrios post I found making this same point also centers on a lawyer of what looks to be Indian ethnicity. And I can't believe Atrios wrote a longer and more nuanced post about something. Maybe I really do need to up my game.
Not having done this is in a while, I find I really miss Slack emojis (and pics). What is the world coming to?
https://a.slack-edge.com/production-standard-emoji-assets/14.0/apple-medium/1f921@2x.png
||
teo--
I had every intention of getting out to the La Cienguilla petroglyphs at dawn on the equinox to record the sunrise position. Unfortunately, I injured my leg and was unable to do so. Bummed, as I had even gone out a week or so ago to scope out the place on the mesa immediately above the main petroglyphs so I did not have to scramble up in the dark ( there is a back road on the mesa that gets you within about a mile's flat hike of the rim,)
||
63 I don't think Atrios' description of what Katyal's practice consists of and why he succeeds in it is accurate at all.
I wonder if he regrets taking on the child slavery case. Not that good for the brand, I wouldn't think -- most of us don't have "brands" in the way he does -- but then again I think it worked out for his client (didn't it?) and if you're a black hat looking for the kind of attention he'll attract, for good and ill, this probably hasn't harmed him.
I was on a panel with him, what 16 years ago? He's definitely of South Asian heritage. (This was important to the panel. You might wonder why I was on it. I know why I said yes, but I'm still pretty dubious about having been asked.) I don't think I knew he would be there -- we'd had a professional disagreement some years prior to that. I still think I was right.
What is the claim that Sooknanan lied about leaving Jones Day over its Trump election fraud support? This profile links to a NYT story containing the following details:
In mid-November 2020, Orr convened a pair of videoconference calls for the lawyers under his domain in Washington. The first was with partners. Orr got as far as asserting that Jones Day was not trying to overturn the election and was simply litigating a constitutional issue. Then the normally staid meeting disintegrated. [...] Sparkle Sooknanan, one of the firm's young stars, also spoke up. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she had set out to New York at age 16, paid her way through college and law school and landed clerkships for federal judges, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sooknanan had become a Jones Day partner earlier in the year at age 36. Now, on the call, her voice trembled as she denounced the firm's work in Pennsylvania. "This lawsuit was brought for no other reason than to deprive poor people of the right to vote," she said.
A couple of months later, shortly after Joe Biden was sworn in as president, a memo went out to Jones Day's lawyers about personnel changes and other internal news. A senior official in Trump's Justice Department was returning. A partner was retiring. And six other lawyers -- Sooknanan and Rider-Longmaid among them -- were leaving.
I can't talk about any of the details of our disagreement. When we're both long gone, it'll make for an interesting vignette in the film version of his life -- they'll take his side, of course. And then it'll end up on the cutting room floor.
The nice thing about equinox alignments is that you get two chances a year to check them.
The last paragraph of the Atrios post, where he says that high-profile law is more about out-of-court publicity and shenanigans than real legal work is either wrong or tautological, depending on what he means by high-profile. If he means high-prestige work for big evil corporations, he's just wrong. If he means cases that are front-page-news are largely about out-of-court shenanigans, I guess maybe but that's because shenanigans are how you get on the front page.
It sure would be nice if we had a system where public defenders and others doing lose on the public interest could get federal judicial appointments without selling out to Big Child Slavery and the like but...
I hand nothing to Hawley or Stoller but hating every one of these people seems like the appropriate affect to me. I fully cop to being a plebian who cannot begin to fathom the professional responsibilities they shoulder on behalf of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most comfortable people who have ever lived. I'm sure if I were fully acquainted with the details of the situation I'd discover Jones Day was actually doing good and vital work in Puerto Rico.
63: I think Atrios has the right idea here. We ought not deny professional opportunities to lawyers engaged in the ordinary practice of law, but we can certainly have opinions about who they are as human beings -- and maybe even deny them professional opportunities simply based on the fact that they are despicable people.
The question is, how do you draw the lines? I think Atrios would understand that there's no particular reason to oppose judicial nominees based on their aid to hedge funds seeking their legal due. I'd go further and say that I'm not prepared to label Sooknanan a bad person based on what we know about her work. Biden's appointment of her, along with Hawley's opposition, constitute endorsements that are fairly persuasive, if not dispositive.
Oh, the source of the claim that she lied is from Matt Stoller? Myself, I don't take much of what he says seriously. He has occasionally reasonable attitudes, sometimes finds interesting material, but his personal judgement (based on what he tweets) is deeply unreliable.
Okay, I watched the video and answered my own question. Two thoughts:
1) If you don't press play, the still image for the video on the tweet is California Senator Laphonza Butler, who is black, so people glancing at the post may have thought that was Sooknanan, the subject of the tweet. (Normally I would recognize my own senator, but I haven't been following political news at all lately; she's been in office for barely six months or so and didn't campaign beforehand; and a lot of that time coincided with one of the worst depressive episodes of my life, in which I spaced out paying a major bill around the time she took office. Still, not great.)
2) Everyone is different, but Hawley's fucking shamelessness filled me with more rage than any known offenses of any of the other parties here. These are different rings of hell.
I've been following California politics fairly closely and I had no internalized idea what Sen. Butler looks like.
This article by David Dayen seems to include most of the points Hawley made. I wonder if it was his crib sheet, published 3 weeks ago.
Dayen, and the bits of Googling I've done, fail to articulate why the behavior of the hedge funds themselves was inappropriate -- and as we've discussed, Sooknanan has rationales for her conduct that the funds lack.
Dayen makes a feeble attempt here:
The claim argued that keeping the secured debt under the stay would require just compensation, as an eminent domain taking would. Similar arguments have been used in attempts to get government compensation for pollution regulations that cut into corporate profits.
And did those "similar attempts" succeed? If not, they aren't really similar, are they? Did Sooknanan find a loophole that aids polluters? Dayen's silence on that suggests not.
I'm certainly open to the idea that the hedge funds got an undue advantage because of their ability to hire fancy lawyers, but nobody seems to be making that case beyond the bare assertion.
I wonder what the law and past practice had been on "secured debt." I always thought that secured debt was, you know, secured.
83 Here's the Court of Federal Claims decision on her takings claim. https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2017cv0970-91-0 I don't see anything in the substance of what she's arguing here that calls for any odium beyond losing the case, as she did. I guess one can think that clients like hers don't deserve to be allowed to assert legal rights deriving from contract, but that seems a little strict. The end result is that the legislation impairing what these bondholders thought they would get were upheld. These are important rulings for the future of bond issuing and buying, and clarity about the rules of the road with respect to public finance, and what government can do when it things go wrong, has an important value.
I'll look to see if they appealed.
I'm having flashbacks to when I litigated a takings case in the Court of Federal Claims -- related to fallout from the Iranian Revolution, as I've tiresomely mentioned repeatedly before -- before I met you all. No black hats on my side of that one!
Appealed but resolved: https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/21-1577/21-1577-2022-03-23.pdf
(I think this is the right one.)
Donald Trump's success is based on the fact that he has finally given right-wing Americans an acceptable way to join an enormous excited crowd and watch a drag act.
No, think about it. Heavy makeup. High heels. Elaborately coiffed and dyed hair. Pouting lips. Voluptuous figure. Exaggerated, stereotypically "camp" diction. Love of over-the-top glitter and decoration.
In historical context, it's an aberration of contemporary America that the right wing is so hostile to drag acts. Historically, there's been a very strong connection. Hermann Goering, for one. There's a long association in many countries between inherently conservative organisations like the military and drag acts. There was literally an aristocratic Chief of the Imperial German Military Cabinet in the nineteenth century - and you can't get much more conservative than that - who suffered a heart attack and died while performing, dressed as a ballerina, for the entertainment of the Kaiser.
It's just the contemporary American right which, for entirely parochial and contingent reasons, can't let itself be seen watching heavily made-up men prancing around on stage. Or, at least, couldn't until 2015.
84: Ah, OK. I didn't get that the funds lost. Hawley was so impressed with the brilliance of the legal tactic that I've been assuming it was a winner. And my five minutes of Google research suggests that the funds came out of this with a windfall.
So now I'm just confused about the actual objection Sooknanan's conduct.
Trump has curves, I guess. But bet he hides his legs for a reason.
87 I don't know that they didn't ultimately get a bunch of money in a settlement with Puerto Rico. Did they get a US taxpayer funded windfall in 2022? I don't remember it, but that doesn't mean anything.
The opinion COFC I linked refers to an earlier jurisdictional ruling that the bondholders won -- whether the case could proceed in the COFC -- and maybe that was her great victory. In this later ruling, the new judge says as to one claim, the law has changed in the interim, and so the jurisdictional ruling has to be reversed, and as to the other claims the bondholders can't state a claim.
Limiting suits for money damages for takings to the COFC has led to a lot of jurisdictional litigation since the Tucker Act was passed. In 1887. It's not always obvious where a complicated multifaceted case belongs. (I think the answer is district court, but then I'm not sure I believe in federal sovereign immunity, for which I'd like to see some more textual support in the Constitution. I recognize that for more than two centuries, we've acted like it's real.)
An interesting this about Hawley here is that he talks about the takings suit, and then doesn't seem to understand that that wasn't a claim for money from Puerto Rico, but rather from the US government.
Then again, maybe he was talking about the special court litigation, where the takings argument was advanced only as a canon of constitutional avoidance issue: 'If you adopt our read of this section of the bankruptcy code, rather than that of the other side, you won't have to reach the question of whether there was a taking.' The 1st Circuit made short shrift of this, holding that the canon only applies when you're choosing between possible interpretations of a statute, and they didn't think the bondholders read was a valid interpretation.
But bet he hides his legs for a reason.
Only his hair dresser knows for sure.
I heard that's not his real ass every day. It Depends.
