One of the rites of passage of becoming a prominent conservative politician is having your former friends reveal private letters to the mainstream media. The same goes for JD Vance’s experience. One of Vance’s YLS classmates gave New York Times More than 90 emails and text messages between 2014-17. Some passages reflect the Supreme Court:
In 2014, they were both about to start their careers, about a year out of law school.
Mr. Vance said he plans to buy a home in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Usha, whom he also met at Yale.
The Vances were able to afford a home in Washington’s high-priced market in part because Mr. Vance was starting a job at a big law firm. “Blech,” he wrote at the time, expressing his distaste for a profession he had decided against. He worked at white-shoe firm Sidley Austin for less than two years.
In the same exchange, Mr. Vance also wrote about his wife’s interview with a Supreme Court justice when she was seeking a clerkship at the Supreme Court. Mr. Vance worries that her appearance of political neutrality or lack of “ideology” could hurt her chances.
“Scalia and Kagan acted very quickly,” Vance wrote, referring to Antonin Scalia, a conservative justice who died in 2016 and one of the three current liberal justices on the court. Elena Kagan of 1, “But she’s just not going to solve the problem.” For Scalia.
Nelson wrote back: “His homophobic comments were unbelievable in 2014.”
“He has become a very sharp old man,” Mr. Vance replied. “I used to like him very much, and I used to believe that all his stuff about judicial minimalism was sincere. Now I see it as a political game.”
Mrs. Vance eventually clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Wow. There’s a lot to unpack here.
First, as we all know, Vance did a 180° turn on Trump. He once spoke of Trump in the harshest terms, but has now become one of his most ardent defenders. I thought it was normal for Yale conservatives* to criticize Trump before 2016. The email was sent in 2014, the year after Justice Scalia’s statement windsor objection. This was almost certainly what Vance’s friends called a “homophobic tirade.”
windsor This was one of Scalia’s last great objections. Here is the introduction:
This case is about power in several ways. At stake is the right of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this House to declare law. Today’s perspective exaggerates the latter and, with foreseeable consequences, undercuts the former. We have no authority to decide this case. Even if we did, we do not have the power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically passed legislation. The Court’s error on both counts stems from the same pathological root: a lofty conception of the institution’s role in America.
Justice Scalia is a scion of the conservative legal movement. He drives us all crazy sometimes, but we would never say he’s playing “political games.” If you had polled Federalist Society members in 2014, how many would have used such language to attack Scalia? I suspect this number is small. In fact, I’m not even sure Vance was ever a member of the Federal Social Council. I graduated from law school a few years before he did. When did I first know him Hillbilly Elegy Suddenly appeared on the scene. I remember being surprised when I learned that he was a recent YLS graduate because I had never heard of him. Vance’s criticism of Scalia bothers me more than his comments about Trump.
Second, Vance offers some casual insights into the staff game. He described his future wife, Usha Chilukuri, as politically neutral and lacking “ideology.” At Yale, the Supreme Court clerkship is considered a birthright—the only problem is Which Justice will employ them. The same candidate is even considering applying Both Justices Kagan and Scalia (known for her “homophobic comments”) said she was willing to appeal to both sides of the aisle. Scalia is known for hiring counter clerks, but Usha is not counter clerk material in my opinion.
Third, Vance offers some more casual insights into the type of judge who ended up hiring a truly smart judge who lacked “ideological chops”: Amul Thapar of the Eastern District of Kentucky, D.C. Circuit The court’s Brett Kavanaugh and Washington, D.C. Chief Justice Roberts. In 2014, these judges were recruited without any form of FSC litmus test and have been known to hire from a diverse mix of clerks. They did the same to Usha.
***
Judging a person by what he did when he was young is always unstable. People can grow from past setbacks. In fact, I think most of my rebuttals to my post about Kamala Harris’ bar debacle missed the point. Finally I noticed a number of other very prominent people who failed to pass the bar but became wildly successful. I’ve also written about Joe Biden’s plagiarism in law school, Elena Kagan’s mediocre 1L grades, and the fact that Mitt Romney never even took the bar!
So what explains Vance’s comments just a year after graduating from one of the most elite schools? Was he just telling a liberal friend the standard Liberal line? Does he really not understand what Justice Scalia is doing—perhaps because he lacks a legal education from left-wing teachers? Did he never look for any opportunity to learn about Scalia from FSC events or other events? Or did he really believe what he wrote about Justice Scalia? If so, has he ever stopped holding these views? What judge would Vance recommend for the court? I’d like to hear some answers to these questions.
