Tribute to Judge Betty Binns Fletcher

Thank you very much for the invitation to introduce this wonderful symposium honoring my mother, Judge Betty Binns Fletcher. Let me begin by thanking my mother. Without her I would not be here. I realize that everyone can, and should, thank their mother for being here - that is, for their very existence. But I mean my thanks not only in that way. I mean also that without her I really would not be here - at this podium, speaking to you as a judge on the Ninth Circuit. Many of you know the outlines of the story. When President Clinton nominated me to the Ninth Circuit in the spring of 1995, we all thought it would be a wonderful thing to have a mother and a son on the same court. We did not dream that having two members of the same family as judicial colleagues would pose a problem. After all, Morris Arnold, nominated by the first President Bush, had just joined his brother, Richard, as a judge on the Eighth Circuit. And the Hand cousins, Learned and Augustus, had sat together for years on the Second Circuit. Which reminds me of a saying about the Hands. You first have to know that Learned's nickname was "B." The saying went: "Quote 'B'" - that is, Learned - "but follow Gus." If you wonder how that should be applied on the Ninth Circuit, it is "Quote ?'"- that is, Betty- "and follow her, too." But the Republicans were not to be easily shamed into doing the right thing. They had celebrated the fact that Morris Arnold had joined his brother on the bench. But now, claiming that an ancient anti-nepotism statute (which predated the Hands on the Second Circuit) forbade family members sitting on the same court, they stalled my nomination. This went on for several years. I said "years." Mom - I hope you don't mind me calling her "Mom" - broke the stalemate. In return for my confirmation, she agreed to take senior status, thereby freeing up her seat for a new appointment to be filled by President Clinton, but with a person acceptable to the Republican then-Senator from Washington. The Republicans got themselves a deal, but it was not quite as good a deal as they thought. Most judges who take senior status relax a little. They sit part time, they don't do capital cases, they don't sit outside their home city, they don't do screening or motions, or some combination of the above. In other words, they are less than full-time judges. Mom, as I do not need to tell you - and if the Republicans had asked, as someone might have told them - was not likely to follow that path. Mom has now been on senior status for ten years. For all of those years, she has carried a full load of argued cases, she has done capital cases, she has traveled to hear cases in other cities, and she has done screening and motions. Further, Mom calls cases en banc (and gets her cases called en banc) with some regularity. She would hardly be doing her job if she did not decide cases that get called en banc. And, as if doing her job in the Ninth Circuit is not enough, she has sat by designation on other circuits, taking her sense of justice to other parts of the country that may be in need of same. Finally, and there will be more on this point in a moment, she has had a distinguished record of reversals by the United States Supreme Court. If I could come close to fooling myself when I was confirmed, I have no illusions now. Left to her own devices, Mom would not have taken senior status ten years ago. She would not have taken senior status last week. She would be an active status judge today, junior only to the Chief Judge and one other judge. I am the beneficiary of her sacrifice, and I want to say here, "Thank you." As most of you know, Mom is a proud graduate of the University of Washington School of Law. She started law school at Stanford, where she was an undergraduate, during the War. For some of you in the authence, I mean the Second World War. Stanford's law school had emptied out as its young men went off to war. …