J. Michael Luttig, the arch-conservative judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and repeatedly unsuccessful short-list candidate for the Supreme Court under George W. Bush, has resigned from the bench to take a senior position at Boeing.
This is surprising news in a sense. Mid-career resignations from the Courts of Appeals are rare – those judgeships are among the most difficult-to-get legal jobs in the country, they are incredibly prestigious (second only to being a Supreme Court Justice), they wield a lot of power, and they see a lot of really interesting cases. And yet, Luttig has been an appeals court judge for fifteen years, which is a long time to be in any job, and it had become fairly obvious that he just wasn’t going to get the nod from W for the Big Dance. So when a company comes along and says, essentially, “how’d you like to make ten times your current salary,” you can’t really blame the guy for saying yes.
Unless you’re NathanNewman at Daily Kos, that is. Mr. Newman, upon learning of Luttig’s resignation, promptly wrote up a so-called “diary” declaring Luttig’s job change “a disgusting example of the corrupt revolving door extending to the federal bench,” declaring that judges, once appointed, should serve for life and should never leave the bench for private practice, and citing three cases (all from at least eight years ago) in which Luttig ruled in favor of Boeing as proof of Luttig’s corruption, without so much as explaining the facts of the cases or why Luttig’s conclusion was wrong.
Even more shocking is that many of the commenters agree with Mr. Newman – one went so far as to advocate a rule prohibiting judges who leave the bench from accepting work in the private sector for two years (to which another commenter sensibly responded, “what would you have them do for two years? panhandle?”). Many other commenters, to their credit, found Newman’s suggestions to be ridiculous. Nonetheless, there the post sits on the Daily Kos “recommended” list, getting thousands of reads. *sigh* As one of the commenters asks, “And you wonder why the Republicans are able to successfully paint us as liberal socialist wackos?”
