Performing Deputy Lawyer Normal Emil Bove instructed Danielle Sassoon, the Performing U.S. Lawyer for SDNY, to dismiss the indictment towards New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams with out prejudice. I wrote about that instruction right here.
Sassoon refused, and resigned. Bove accepted her resignation. There’s a lot to say about these letters. Right here, I’ll give attention to one small half.
Sassoon stresses that she clerked for Justice Scalia:
I’m additionally guided by the values which have outlined my over ten years of public service. You and I’ve but to satisfy, not to mention focus on this case. However as chances are you’ll know, I clerked for the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court docket ofAppeals for the Fourth Circuit, and for Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court docket. Each males instilled in me a way of obligation to contribute to the general public good and uphold the rule of regulation, and a dedication to reasoned and thorough evaluation. I’ve all the time thought-about it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, with out favor to the rich or those that occupy essential public workplace, or harsher remedy for the much less highly effective.
Right here, Sassoon is invoking the authority of Justice Scalia to defend her determination. As a normal matter, I discover it considerably obnoxious how folks outline themselves by their clerkships–especially Supreme Court docket clerkships. That is the primary job you had out of regulation faculty, and have been employed largely based mostly on grades and suggestions from elite professors. Clerking on any courtroom, and the Supreme Court docket specifically, is in no sense a measure of who you might be as an individual. We over-fetishize clerking.
But, I discover this invocation particularly obnoxious, as a result of she is implying that Justice Scalia would assist what she is doing. How does she know? Did she maintain a seance? It’s all nicely and good to assume WWND (What would Nino do?) however we actually haven’t any clue. Justice Scalia in 1986 was completely different than Justice Scalia in 2001 and Justice Scalia in 2016. And, I’d wager, had Justice Scalia lived by what occurred over the previous decade, he could be fairly near the place Justice Thomas is.
The larger drawback, in fact, is that Justice Scalia dissented in Morrison v. Olson. He was the OG unitary government theorist. I feel Sassoon’s letter, on behalf of the Sovereign District, is the antithesis of the unitary government principle. And Bove’s response makes that time nicely:
In your letter to the Lawyer Normal, you made the doubtful option to invoke Justice Scalia. As you might be doubtless conscious out of your skilled expertise, Justice Scalia totally understood the dangers of weaponization and lawfare:
Nothing is so politically efficient as the flexibility to cost that one’s opponent and his associates aren’t merely wrongheaded, naive, ineffective, however, possibly, “crooks.” And nothing so successfully offers an look of validity to such prices as a Justice Division investigation and, even higher, prosecution.
Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 713 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Whereas the previous U.S. Lawyer just isn’t a particular counsel, Justice Scalia’s Morrison dissent aptly summarized the Division’s weaponization issues right here.
Bove is correct. There isn’t a must carry your former boss into this state of affairs, and for those who do, you higher make it stick.
I’ve up to now ignored the truth that Sassoon invoked her clerkship to Decide J. Harvie Wilkinson. Wilkinson gave tacit assist to Sassoon’s final determination within the New York Occasions:
The primary, J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the federal appeals courtroom for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., recalled Ms. Sassoon as whip-smart and versatile — equally at dwelling within the increased precincts of appellate regulation and earlier than a jury.
He mentioned he wouldn’t remark “in any approach, form or kind” on selections that Ms. Sassoon confronted within the Adams case or in others. He added: “All I’d say is that Danielle is somebody who’s very principled and rigorously sincere and performs it straight.”
I feel again once more to the second that George W. Bush had to decide on between John Roberts, Mike Luttig, and J. Harvie Wilkinson. All issues thought-about, Bush made the least worst alternative.
