“[Samuel Alito and I] used to play darts almost
every day for about a half-hour, 45 minutes,
at 5 o’clock; just kind of unwind. We became
very good friends as a consequence of that.”
S-36 SUPERLAWYERS.COM
had any kind of computer system. We
had the old Wangs, which are so old you
probably won’t even remember—the true
original word processing system. We only
had one machine for the office. I vividly
recall a Saturday: After I had put together
a draft of the opinion for the chief, he had
marked it up for changes and handed it
back to me around noon. [He] said, “I can’t
imagine I’ll probably get your changes
Monday or Tuesday—whenever you can
get them input and get a new draft back
to me.” And I said, “Well, Chief, I think I
can do better than that.” And he kind of
looked at me askance, and I went back,
and, because we had this word processing
type device that could input the changes
pretty readily and correct, got everything
fixed. So literally I’m back in his office
lawyers from the office sit at a table for
six, and they point at a table for two and
tell the two of us to go sit over there.
So he and I have this conversation
that’s at least a little strained the first
few minutes, but ultimately we turned
to baseball. He’s a Phillies fan and I was
a Pirates fan, and we’re essentially the
same vintage, so we had very similar
memories of our childhood and baseball.
And as it turns out, there were actually
two openings, and he was two doors
down from me in the office. We used to
play darts almost every day for about a
half-hour, 45 minutes, at 5 o’clock; just
kind of unwind. We became very good
friends as a consequence of that.
Q: This case you have right now for
Fox TV concerning expletives on the
airwaves is certainly quite interesting.
A: It’s probably been [my] most interesting
case in general. … That’s probably an
overstatement. It’s been a very interesting
case. It’s a little different in that it’s been
televised in a Court of Appeals hearing,
so that was unusual—get a call from your
mother saying, “I never taught you to use
those words.” [Laughs]
Q: Would you say that’s been among
the most challenging cases?
A: One of the advantages of having a
practice that is predominately in the
Supreme Court is that almost all the
issues are fairly complicated because
they usually have to have square conflict
on the circuits. So you’re going to have
two courts going in different directions.
I think ultimately the cases that are the
most interesting tend to be the statutory
interpretation questions, not because they
are more important—because usually the
constitutional issues are more important—
but because the justices haven’t thought
about them as much. So if you’re working
through an interesting statutory problem,
even in an ERISA case—I had one of those
managed care ERISA cases years and
years ago; it was a wonderful puzzle, but
the court hadn’t really dealt with that
many of those issues at that point—and
just trying to both effectively communicate
a complicated subject matter and be
persuasive, and try to move the justices
so that managed care wasn’t going to
be destroyed by this interpretation of
ERISA—it was an interesting challenge.
But it’s not the kind of case that The New
York Times was necessarily going to get
excited about.
