At the Altar of the Appellate Gods

Lisa Sarnoff Gochman

Description

Law.com feature: The Marble Palace Blog: What It's Really Like to Argue Before SCOTUS

The Jabot Podcast interview: Career Appellate Prosecutor Dishes On What It's Really Like To Argue Before The Supreme Court with Lisa Sarnoff Gochman

The Julian J. Franco Show interview: Lisa Gochman: Arguing Before The United States Supreme Court

Have you ever wondered what it's like to argue before the Supreme Court of the United States?

In this poignant and compelling memoir, Lisa Sarnoff Gochman captures the terror, wonder, and joy of preparing for and arguing a landmark criminal case before the nine justices of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC. At the Altar of the Appellate Gods traces the arc of a violent, racially motivated crime by white supremacist Charles C. Apprendi Jr. in rural Vineland, New Jersey, through the New Jersey state court system, and all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Gochman defended the constitutionality of New Jersey's Hate Crime Statute before a very hot bench. Gochman went head-to-head with Justice Antonin Scalia, fielded tough questions from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and strolled down memory lane with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Told with grace and humor, At the Altar of the Appellate Gods will interest anyone who is curious about the inner workings of our court system and what it is really like to bring a case before the highest court in the country.

From CHAPTER ONE

"Ms. Gochman, we'll hear from you."

There is no sound I have ever heard more intimidating than that of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's booming voice calling my name to begin my argument before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in Washington, D.C. I gingerly rose from the high-back leather chair at counsel table, careful not to spill my glass of ice water all over my opening statement as I took one step to my left to the lectern. Drawing a deep breath, I stood before the altar of the appellate gods, a mere mortal dressed in a simple black skirt and notched-collar jacket, patent leather cap-toed pumps, and my Grandma Eva's double-stranded pearl necklace. I was so close to the Justices' raised mahogany bench that when I faced Ruth Bader Ginsberg seated on the far left I could not see in my peripheral vision Stephen G. Breyer seated on the far right. The majestic Courtroom, its coffered ceiling soaring forty-four feet above my head, was utterly silent. Hundreds of eyes were fixed upon me, waiting for me to speak. My throat tightened up as nerves seized me and my first few words - "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court" – came out muffled and a bit squeaky. 

For the next twenty minutes on the morning of Tuesday, March 28, 2000, it was just me and the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States locking horns in a raucous verbal battle over the constitutionality of New Jersey's Hate Crime Statute in the landmark sentencing case of Charles C. Apprendi, Jr., v. New Jersey. That I had the honor of appearing in the highest temple of justice in the United States in the first place was nothing short of improbable. I was a graduate of a second-tier New York City law school, toiling away as an interchangeable state government attorney in a cramped, windowless office in Trenton, New Jersey. In the rarified world of United States Supreme Court litigation, partners in elite private law firms and double-Ivy League former SCOTUS law clerks are far more likely to argue a case in Washington, D.C., than a commoner like me. 

But, even with a double-Ivy pedigree, it is nearly impossible for any attorney to argue there. When a lawyer vows to take his case all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, bet against him. The Justices are very persnickety about the issues they choose to tackle. Of the nine to ten thousand petitions for certiorari filed with the Clerk's Office in Washington, D.C., each year by disappointed litigants, the Justices select less than one percent to hear at oral argument. This means only a tiny fraction of the more than 1.35 million attorneys licensed to practice law across the United States will have the privilege of presenting their oral argument to the nine Justices of the Supreme Court. I was one of those lucky few. 

Actually, the word "lucky" is a misnomer. Crazy, meshugah, and "two tacos short of a combo plate" (as one New Jersey newspaper columnist once labeled my legal argument in an unrelated case) are some of the adjectives more accurately describing the grueling, pothole-riddled road to the Supreme Court. Quirky court rules must be followed and impossible deadlines must be met. The Apprendi litigation consumed me for nine months while I wrote my merits brief and prepared for oral argument. And that was on top of my already burdensome caseload of criminal appeals. Family life was shunted aside completely. I barely saw my husband Steven and missed most of my nine-year-old son Jordan's school year. If the law is a jealous mistress, then SCOTUS is a woman scorned. 

New Jersey's Hate Crime Statute particularly riled the Justices. No one doubted that a state legislature could enact a law requiring enhanced punishment for criminal defendants convicted of hate crimes. The question before SCOTUS was thornier: who was required by the United States Constitution to determine whether a crime was racially motivated, the trial judge or the jury? As the attorney representing the State of New Jersey, I had spent the better part of the prior four years successfully arguing to the New Jersey state courts that the United States Constitution permitted trial judges to make the critical determination whether a defendant's violent crimes against a black family were racially motivated and thus subject to a longer prison sentence. But SCOTUS would have the final word on this significant constitutional issue and the rapid-fire and often hostile questioning from the Justices on the morning of March 28, 2000, revealed a deeply divided Court.

Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Legal History
• Courts
• Droit et juridique
• Women
• Courts plc
• Apprendi v. New Jersey
• Sixth Amendment
• Fourteenth Amendment
• Memoir
• Woman
• Supreme Court of the United States
• The Women
• LAW
• Anthony Kennedy
• John Paul Stevens
• David Souter
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Stephen Breyer
• Antonin Scalia
• William Rehnquist
• Sandra Day O'Connor
• Clarence Thomas
• Cour suprême des États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Red Lightning Books
• Date de parution: 18 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781684351961
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

At the ALTAR
OF THE
Appellate GODS
At the ALTAR
OF THE
Appellate GODS
Arguing before the US Supreme Court

A Memoir
Lisa Sarnoff Gochman
This book is a publication of
Red Lightning Books
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
redlightningbooks.com
2022 by Lisa Sarnoff Gochman
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
ISBN 978-1-68435-195-4 (hdbk.)
ISBN 978-1-68435-198-5 (web PDF)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Notes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TO DAVID HULSEY, RACHEL Rosolina, David Miller, and Vickrutha Sudharsan at Indiana University Press, thank you for taking a chance on an unknown author peddling a quirky memoir based on a decades-old United States Supreme Court case that no one understands. To Joseph Perry at Perry Literary, thank you for your patience and guidance through the process of finding the right publisher for my sui generis book.
To my beta readers, writing advisers, and cheerleaders, thank you for your comments, criticisms, wisdom, support, encouragement and, most of all, for your love and friendship through the years: Alexa Abrahams, Jeff Abrahams, Karen Abrahams, Mitch Abrahams, Diane Bark, Jeff Crespi, Deborah Crivelli, Amy Dash, Toby Davidson, Elissa Erly, Barbara Exposito, Barbara Fane, Karen Fiorelli, Janet Flanagan, Claire Palermo Flower, Lindsey Gange, Ashley Gochman, Jesse Gochman, Jordan Gochman, Steven Gochman, Jennifer Gottschalk, Mary Ellen Halloran, Carol Henderson, Dora Lopez, Carol Stanton Meier, Debra Owens, Barbara Quinn, Linda Rinaldi, Tom Smith, Allison Soffer, Lisa Spiegel, Dorothy Steinmetz, Geraldine Zidow, and Paul Zidow.
To Lori Linskey and Monica do Outeiro of the Monmouth County Prosecutor s office, thank you for graciously allowing me the time I needed to write this book.
To Judge Patrick DeAlmeida, Michael Dreeben, Edward DuMont, Dan Schweitzer, and Denise Simpson, thank you for your wise counsel during the Apprendi litigation and for racking your brains twenty years later for any useful bits of information you might have remembered about the Supreme Court argument. I truly could not have gotten through the argument, or this book, without you.
To Anne Paskow, thank you for assigning the Apprendi appeal to me. Good things do come in small packages.
To John J. Farmer Jr., thank you for allowing me to argue Apprendi before the Supreme Court of the United States. Your faith in my abilities gave me faith in my abilities.
To my family and friends who gathered from all corners of the United States in Washington, DC, in late March 2000 to watch the back of my head during my twenty minutes of fame, my gratitude for your love and unwavering support is immeasurable: Alexa Abrahams, Jeffrey Abrahams, Karen Abrahams, Mitchell Abrahams, Diane Bark, Ben Bark, Roseann Finn, Frances Gochman, Jesse Gochman, Jordan Gochman, Steven Gochman, Bob Luther, Michael Remez, Jill Riola, Alvin Sarnoff, Barbara Sarnoff, Allison Soffer, and Bob Soffer.
To my husband, Steven, and my son, Jordan, thank you for letting me share our family s stories with good friends and total strangers. Thank you for inspiring me to follow my first dream of arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States and my second dream of writing a book about my first dream. And thank you, most of all, for never letting me give up on those dreams. I love you both so much.
At the ALTAR
OF THE
Appellate GODS
PROLOGUE
MS. GOCHMAN, WE LL HEAR FROM YOU .
Never in my life have I heard any sound more intimidating than that of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist s booming voice calling my name to begin my argument before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in Washington, DC. I gingerly rose from the high-back leather chair at counsel table, careful not to spill my glass of ice water all over my opening statement as I took one step to the lectern. Drawing a deep breath, I stood before the altar of the appellate gods, a mere mortal dressed in a simple black skirt and notched collar jacket, black patent leather cap toe pumps, and my grandma Eva s double strand of pearls with its gold filigree and ruby clasp. I was so close to the court s raised mahogany bench that when I faced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg seated on the far left, I could not see in my peripheral vision Justice Stephen G. Breyer seated on the far right. The majestic courtroom, its coffered ceiling soaring forty-four feet above my head, was utterly silent. Hundreds of eyes were fixed on me, waiting for me to speak. My throat tightened up as nerves seized me, and my first few words- Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court -came out muffled and a bit squeaky.
For the next twenty minutes on the morning of Tuesday, March 28, 2000, it was just me and the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States locking horns in a raucous verbal battle over the constitutionality of New Jersey s Hate Crime Statute in the landmark sentencing case of Charles C. Apprendi, Jr., v. New Jersey . 1
That I had the honor of appearing in the highest temple of justice in the United States in the first place was nothing short of miraculous. I was a graduate of a second-tier New York City law school, toiling away as an anonymous state government attorney in a cramped, windowless office in Trenton, New Jersey. In the rarefied world of United States Supreme Court litigation, partners in elite private law firms and former SCOTUS law clerks with undergraduate and juris doctorate degrees from Ivy League universities are far more likely to argue a case in Washington, DC, than a commoner like me.
But even with a double-Ivy pedigree, it is nearly impossible for any attorney to argue before SCOTUS. When a lawyer vows to take his case all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, bet against him. The justices are very persnickety about the issues they choose to tackle. Every year, seven to eight thousand petitions for a writ of certiorari (a fancy Latin name for an order by which a higher court reviews a decision of a lower court) are filed by disappointed litigants with the Clerk s Office in Washington, DC. Of those thousands of petitions, the court grants and hears oral arguments in just eighty or so. 2 This means that, in any given year, only a very small number of the more than 1.35 million attorneys licensed to practice law across the United States will have the privilege of presenting their oral argument to the nine justices of the Supreme Court. I was one of those lucky few.
Actually, the word lucky is a misnomer. Crazy, meshuga, and two tacos short of a combo plate (as one New Jersey newspaper columnist once labeled my legal reasoning in an unrelated case) are more accurate descriptors of the grueling, pothole-riddled road to the Supreme Court. Quirky court rules must be followed to the letter, and hard-and-fast deadlines must be met without exception. The Apprendi litigation engulfed me for nine months while I wrote my merits brief and prepared for oral argument. And that was on top of my already burdensome caseload of New Jersey state criminal appeals. Family life was completely shunted aside. I barely saw my husband Steven and missed most of my nine-year-old son Jordan s school year. If the law is a jealous mistress, then SCOTUS is a woman scorned.
New Jersey s Hate Crime Statute particularly riled the United States Supreme Court justices. No one doubted that a state legislature could enact a law requiring enhanced punishment for criminal defendants convicted of hate crimes. The question before SCOTUS was thornier: Who was required by the United States Constitution to determine whether a crime was racially motivated, the jury or the sentencing judge?
Defendant Charles C. Apprendi Jr. was sentenced under the Hate Crime Statute to two additional years in state prison following a trial judge s finding that Apprendi s violent crime against the only Black family living in his neighborhood was motivated by racial bias. Apprendi challenged the constitutionality of this statute, arguing that only a jury of his peers was authorized by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution to make a factual finding that exposed him to additional punishment.
As the appellate attorney representing the state of New Jersey in Apprendi , I had spent the better part of the prior four years defending the constitutionality of the Hate Crime Statute before the New Jersey state appellate courts. A trial judge could make a finding of racial bias, I argued, because racial bias was the same as motive, and motive has long been a sentencing factor for the judge s consideration. The Supreme Court of the United States would have the final word on this significant federal constitutional issue, and the rapid-fire and often hostile questioning from the nine justices on the morning of March 28, 2000, revealed a deeply divided court.
But I only needed five votes to win.
CHAPTER 1
IF YOU HAPPENED TO HAVE occupied one of the 439 seats in the Supreme Court courtroom in Washington, DC, for the Apprendi argument on March 28, 2000, you would have witnessed but a sliver of a criminal case that began six years earlier. And that sliver might have seemed utterly