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White House (by Cezary p via Wikimedia)
Years ago, I sat over lunch with a bunch of appellate law clerks.
One of the clerks worked for an average judge. (Frankly, most clerks work for average judges. The average judge is, after all, average. That may not be too flattering, but it’s a simple arithmetic truth.)
The clerk bemoaned how hard the clerk’s job was: “It’s so hard to know what all the cases say. For any one case that I’m working on, I read the relevant cases, suggest a result, and then sprint on to start learning some new field of law that will apply in the next case. And I’m only here for a year; that’s not enough time to learn everything. The court really needs a long-term employee who can just slow down, read all of the cases, and think about them. The court should hire someone whose job is to read and understand the cases.”
Another clerk sitting at the table grinned: “The court has hired those people. They’re call ‘judges.’”
The first clerk, sheepishly, and embarrassed by what the clerk had just implicitly disclosed: “Oh. Right.”
I flashed back to that lunch when I was listening to one of the recent January 6 Committee hearings.
It struck me that what we really need in the White House is someone whose job is to think only about the good of the country. If the White House hired that person, then the country would be far better served.
And then it struck me: The White House does employ a person whose job is to think only about the good of the country. That person is called the president.
Me, sheepishly, and embarrassed by what I had just implicitly acknowledged: “Oh. Right.”
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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