James' World 2

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Last week, Senate Republicans narrowly confirmed Emil Bove to a lifetime seat on a federal appeals court over the objections of pretty much everyone who cares about preserving an impartial judiciary. Bove has performed a series of cartoonishly corrupt misdeeds on President Donald Trump’s behalf from his perch in the Department of Justice, manufacturing the crooked bargain to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and firing prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. Multiple whistleblowers have alleged that Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, instructed his staff to defy the courts if necessary to deport immigrants without due process and lied to Congress at his hearing. This egregious misconduct was not a deal-breaker for Senate Republicans, who rushed through his confirmation to avoid even more damning revelations from coming out before the vote.

But Bove will step into a judiciary that has not yet been entirely degraded by Trump’s influence. There are still plenty of courageous judges in the lower courts, and many of them have spent the past six months fighting vigorously against the president’s abuses of office. A trio of our finest district court judges, and their unflinching battle for equal justice, is the subject of Reynolds Holding’s new book Better Judgment: How Three Judges Are Bringing Justice Back to the Courts. Holding is a journalist, lawyer, and research scholar at Columbia Law School. On this week’s episode of Amicus, he spoke with Mark Joseph Stern about what we can learn from these three judges—Carlton Reeves, Martha Vázquez, and Jed Rakoff—in the shadow of Trump’s attempted transformation of the courts. An excerpt of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mark Joseph Stern: Emil Bove is one of Trump’s most corrupt hatchet men. More than 900 former Justice Department officials urged the Senate to vote him down, saying his confirmation would be “intolerable to anyone committed to maintaining our ordered system of justice.” And yet he has now been confirmed as a judge. We just talked about three judges who are the polar opposite of Bove, but now they’re serving in the same judiciary with him. What are we supposed to make of the courts as a whole when these two incredibly different kinds of judges are serving side by side in the system? 

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Emil Bove. Jack Gruber/USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

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