I’ve been writing about the judiciary for more than 20 years, and in my opinion, the current time is the most difficult I’ve seen for serving as a federal judge. This is especially true in courts where a disproportionate number of cases challenging actions of the current administration have been filed, such as the U.S. District Courts for Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) and the District of Columbia (D.D.C.).
Judges in these districts face heavy dockets, and high-profile cases involving the administration present special challenges. They often involve requests for urgent forms of relief, such as preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders, that must be heard on short timetables. Many of the cases present novel and knotty legal issues. And depending on how a judge rules, the judge could face strong criticism, from either the right or the left—and sometimes even more than that, such as impeachment efforts or even threats, whether to themselves or their families.
What is it like to be a judge at the eye of this storm, trying to calmly uphold values like the rule of law and judicial independence during tumultuous times? To find out, I interviewed Judge Ana Reyes, who was appointed to the D.D.C. by President Biden in 2023. Although she’s been on the bench for only two and a half years, Judge Reyes has already handled a number of headline-making cases—and while we could not and did not discuss any specific matters still pending before her, she spoke honestly and directly about many fascinating subjects, including her overall approach to judging, the rule of law and judicial independence, how she treats the lawyers appearing before her, media coverage of the judiciary, and more.
Thanks to Judge Reyes for a great conversation—and thanks to her and her fellow judges for the crucial work that they do. While observers of the courts, myself included, might disagree with specific rulings, I suspect I’m not alone in believing that on the whole, the federal judiciary is holding up well during an unusually stressful time.
Show Notes:
Judge Ana C. Reyes bio, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Judge Ana C. Reyes bio, Wikipedia
A D.C. lawyer learned English as a child from a teacher who tutored her each day. She found her to say thank you, by Sydney Page for The Washington Post
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David Lat: Welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I’m your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to at davidlat dot Substack dot com. You’re listening to the seventy-sixth episode of this podcast, recorded on Thursday, June 19.
Thanks to this podcast’s sponsor, NexFirm. NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.
Over the course of this podcast, I’ve been privileged to have nine current or former federal judges as my guests—trial and appellate, from all over the country, appointed by five different presidents, from both political parties. And today I’m pleased to welcome my tenth, appointed by a sixth president: Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia aka “D.D.C.,” appointed by President Biden. Judge Reyes graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for Judge Amalya Kearse on the Second Circuit, and worked as a litigator at Williams & Connolly for more than two decades, until taking the bench in February 2023.
I wanted to have Judge Reyes on the show because, as a judge in the D.D.C., she has handled several interesting, important, high-profile cases. And while we could not and did not discuss particular pending cases, Judge Reyes was able to share general insights concerning how she approaches cases, how she understands her role as a judge, and the importance of the rule of law. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Judge Ana Reyes.
Judge Reyes, thank you so much for joining me.
Ana Reyes: Thanks, David. This is a bit surreal for me. We talked a bit ago and I told you that I read Above the Law religiously when it came out for a few years. Every morning, it was The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Above the Law. So thanks for having me; it’s really nice to be with you.
DL: It’s great to be coming full circle in this way. So let’s start at the beginning, as I usually do with these interviews, in terms of your background and your upbringing.
At your confirmation hearings and at your investiture, you highlighted your being an immigrant to the United States. So perhaps you can tell us about where you were born and grew up—and why you felt it was important in these remarks to highlight your immigrant background.
AR: Sure. I was born in Uruguay. And about 45 days after I was born, my family left for Spain. Uruguay is actually quite a democratic country, but a year or so before I was born, a president had for a brief period of time become more of a dictator, and things were unpleasant politically in the country. And it might be hard for your listeners to imagine, but my parents were quite outspoken, so they thought it was best to leave. They weren’t refugees, and they weren’t persecuted by any shot, but there were definitely things that were going on around them that were scary, so they left for Spain. We lived in Barcelona, Spain, until I was five—and then, as people do, obviously we moved from Barcelona, Spain, to Louisville, Kentucky. So that’s how we wound up in the U.S.
And I’ve talked about it really for two reasons. First, I feel incredibly fortunate to be an American. It’s not something everyone who isn’t born here gets to do, to have their parents be able to come in on work visas and become citizens. It’s a total privilege; I’m incredibly fortunate. Second, I’ve represented a number of individuals in asylum proceedings. So I’ve had firsthand experience with people who were tortured by their governments, people who were persecuted by their governments, and people who literally were fleeing for their lives—I’m not exaggerating that in any way, shape, or form. So maybe because of the situation I was born into and the clients I’ve had, I’ve always had a really deep belief that things fall apart if there’s no rule of law.
In these days—and especially at confirmation hearings, where there can be so much concern about past political beliefs or if the nominee is going to be a total ideologue on the bench—what I wanted to convey was that my number-one political belief is that we need the rule of law. The rule of law won’t work if judges aren’t doing their jobs, if politicians aren’t doing their jobs, if citizens aren’t doing their jobs. And what I wanted to convey was that as a lawyer, I felt like my first duty was to my client—client first, firm second, self third—and as a judge, I feel like my client is the rule of law. And I think I have that feeling because of my immigrant background and the work that I did.
DL: And we will definitely return to and explore those issues. So I think we share some things in common; my parents also came to the United States on work visas. Were your parents involved in the law in any way? I know you mentioned they were not seeking political asylum for reasons of persecution, but what brought them to the United States from Spain?
AR: My dad actually was a civil engineer. He worked at nuclear power plants. American Air Filter at that time recruited him, and they were headquartered in Louisville. So that’s what he worked on, and that’s why we came here.
DL: Was it challenging for you to adapt to life in the United States? You came here as a young girl. I assume you were speaking Spanish or Catalan or something other than English. Tell us about that.
AR: Well, I imagine it was a lot more difficult for my mother. I think she knew no English, she’d lived in Uruguay and Europe, and so it was quite the culture shock for her. I was too young for it to really be a culture shock.
I do remember quite distinctly that I couldn’t speak English. And my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Patricia Harkleroad—she was at my confirmation hearing and at my investiture, she’s phenomenal—she would come in early, every day, to help me with my English. She was a public-school teacher, doing this on her own time, not getting any extra money. No one told her to do it or asked her to do it. She came in early, almost every day, to help me catch up on English.
And I didn’t really realize how far behind I was until I was playing a board game with one of my friends from first grade, and she was reading the cards for the game, and she was reading books. I just didn’t realize I was actually that far behind. So I’m even more grateful for that now.
DL: It’s such a moving story. I got chills as you were just telling me about that, and I would refer people to The Washington Post’s coverage of this, where you actually tracked her down—it’s just so moving. There’s video; people should check that out.
Fast-forwarding a bit, what led you to law school? You did not have lawyers in the background; you had engineers in the family. What led you to go down the legal path?
AR: All right, so this is the nerdiest lawyer story you will ever hear. I wanted to be a lawyer since I can remember. There’s only two things I’ve ever wanted to be in my life: a lawyer and, for a brief period of time, because of Julie on The Love Boat, a cruise director. I was obsessed with Julie on The Love Boat. And it was actually quite funny because when I was like, “I want to be a cruise director,” my dad didn’t say, “You have zero personality of a cruise director.” He’s like, “You know, Ana, there’s only a few cruises in the world, so maybe there’s what, five or six cruise-director positions? So it might be really hard to get one of those jobs. But there are tons of lawyers; you’ll definitely be a lawyer if you want a job.” So I thought, “Okay, good point.”
And the reason I wanted to be a lawyer is in part because we were immigrants. I’ve always had a fascination with the Revolutionary War. When I was in middle school, I remember in fifth grade I wrote an essay on it, on the Revolutionary War. And anytime I got to choose the topic for a project, it was either the Revolutionary War or the law. So because of that, I also came to read a lot and learn a lot about both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, how all that went about. So this was me literally in middle school. And because of all that, I was just always really interested in the law.
DL: You went to Harvard Law School, an amazing law school. You definitely had this interest in law. But in more concrete terms, what kind of post-law-school career did you envision for yourself, when you showed up in Cambridge as a 1L?
AR: Back in high school, because I was interested in law, I got a nighttime receptionist job at a law firm. Forget email; they didn’t even have voicemail back then. If the phones rang at night, I had to pick them up and take a handwritten message. It was a terrific job because if the phones weren’t ringing, I got to do homework or read, so I got paid to do my homework. Again, I was reading everything I could about the law. And that year it just so happened that Evan Thomas’s book The Man to See, about Edward Bennett Williams of Williams & Connolly, had come out. I’d gotten it for Christmas, and I was just minding my own business, reading this book.
Two lawyers walked down, a partner and an associate. The partner said, “Oh, Williams & Connolly, that’s a terrific law firm. They’re some of the best trial lawyers in the country.” I don’t know any better—I’m a kid in Kentucky, what do I know—and I say, “Yeah, it seems like a great firm. It seems like a firm I might want to work at one day.” The partner responds, “Don’t hold your breath.” And at that moment, I made it my mission in life to get a job offer from Williams & Connolly—so in high school, college, law school, I’m going to do everything I can to get an offer from Williams & Connolly. And maybe later we can talk about my interview, because it was pretty wild.
DL: So you went to Harvard Law School and, fun fact—I learned this actually from your investiture, because she swore you in—you were a student in the first-ever administrative law class of then-Professor Elena Kagan. This was before she was HLS dean, before she was a justice. At oral argument in the Supreme Court today, Justice Kagan asks some of the most incisive but challenging questions. What was she like as a professor? Did she really put you through your paces in the Socratic method?
AR: First of all, she was phenomenal. If you asked 100 students who had her class in the first three years she was there to identify their favorite professor, I guarantee you 95 of them would’ve said Professor Kagan. Or if you asked them for their favorite class, I guarantee you 95 of them would’ve said Administrative Law with now-Justice Kagan. And I don’t remember how anymore, but somehow I actually met her before class, and I remember very distinctly that she said, “I do the Socratic method.” And at the time at Harvard, the Socratic method was out of favor. No one did Socratic method because if you did, people just wouldn’t take your classes. And she said, “That’s what I did at Chicago, and that’s what I’m going to do here”—and she did. She was a terrific professor; I can’t say enough about her.
But I am pretty peeved at her, which I told her at my investiture, because I thought I was totally robbed on my grade. I’m still bitter. It was not the worst grade I got in law school by any stretch, but I thought it was the most undeserved grade. And I don’t know why, but it really rankled me because I still remember her final-exam essay question, one of them, and this is the only test question I remember from any test I’ve ever taken, but for some reason this has always stuck in my head. And it’s really interesting, actually, the question was, “Some scholars say that administrative agencies are the fourth branch of government. Discuss.” And obviously given everything that’s happened since, that was quite the prescient question.
DL: And there was a funny story that came up at your investiture—I don’t know if you were joking about this, but you sort of tried to appeal your grade to Dean [John] Manning?
AR: I was totally not joking, no. It was very kind of Justice Kagan to come to my investiture; she gets asked to do a lot of things, so it was very kind of her to come. But I did want to tease her a bit, so I told the story I just gave about the A-. And then literally, before the investiture, I called the dean of Harvard Law School, and we got together on a Zoom call, and I asked him to overrule Justice Kagan’s grade.
We had a great talk; it was really quite funny. He said, “I would love to help you, but there is a strict rule at Harvard that when you graduate, there can be no changes to your grades. It’s such a strict rule that I wouldn’t even feel comfortable joking about it.” He said, “Tell your audience that we law school deans stick together,” which I did—and then followed up with, “And that was the moment I had my rude awakening to the limits of an Article III judge’s power.”
So yeah, I did try to get the grade changed. I was totally shot down. And that’s another thing about Justice Kagan: she’s a terrific sport about a lot of things. Many people are, but she definitely is.
DL: I could definitely tell that, watching the investiture. So I guess you could not issue an injunction against Harvard Law School to change your grade.
You graduated from HLS in 2000, and I believe you’re actually the third member of the HLS class of 2000 to appear on my podcast. Two of your former classmates and Harvard Law Review colleagues, Professor Brian Fitzpatrick and Ninth Circuit Judge Ken Lee, joined me previously. Judge Lee was appointed by President Trump, and he’s known as a judicial conservative, while you were appointed by President Biden. I’m guessing you have pretty different judicial philosophies.
AR: I don’t know, actually. Judicial philosophy covers things like, “Are you an originalist, or do you believe in a living Constitution?” I’m more like what Judge [Tanya] Chutkan said at a hearing a few months ago, when someone was making an argument and they said, “I’m an originalist,” and she said, “Well, I’m a trial judge.”
As a trial judge, originalism, living constitutionalism, whatever legal or academic or judicial sort of philosophy of that nature really goes out the window, and your job is to be the referee. That’s how I think of what I do, and my guess is that Judge Lee and I both firmly believe in calling it down the middle. Now, people with different judicial philosophies might see the middle differently, but I think in good faith they try to call it down the middle.
We have four Trump appointees on our court, the D.D.C.—Judges [Trevor] McFadden, [Timothy] Kelly, [Carl] Nichols, and [Dabney] Friedrich—and they’re all phenomenal. They are not only phenomenal jurists, but terrific human beings. I love working with them. Trevor McFadden and I in particular have become really good buds.
The January 6 litigation is quite interesting. It’s the only time I can think of in American history where you have one event that has created this kind of litigation so that every single judge, the 15-plus judges on the D.D.C., were deciding the same legal issues with respect to the same general event. And what you saw was a lot of consistency amongst the judges. The one or two times when I think where there was a deep divide, we were literally half and half. It had nothing to do with who you were appointed by or judicial philosophy; it’s literally how you read the statute. And I’ve told a lot of my friends that I would trust any single one of those judges, my colleagues, to handle any TRO by any president, and I know they would do it fairly and judiciously.
DL: One thing that has really heartened me as an observer of the judiciary is that the judges are calling the cases as they see them. Judge McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled against the Trump administration, at least initially, in this case about the Associated Press. And you, a Biden appointee, ruled against granting a temporary restraining order (TRO) to some inspectors general who were challenging their terminations by the Trump administration. One might’ve thought, well, you’re a Democrat—or you were before taking the bench—and you were appointed by Biden, so maybe you should be sympathetic to these folks challenging the Trump administration. But it seems to me that judges are calling things down the middle.
AR: Well, first of all, I’m sympathetic to a lot of litigants. I’m sympathetic over things that happen in people’s lives. I’m certainly sympathetic to anyone who would get fired out of the blue. But my sympathies really have no bearing on my job. My job is to figure out if they have a viable legal claim and if I should enjoin the administration, which is not something that anyone should take lightly.
DL: On a lighter note, I believe you do share something in common with Judge Lee: is it true that your clerks, like Judge Lee’s, can play Pac-Man in chambers?
AR: Yeah! We have two arcade machines that can play lots of games each, and the main game we all play is Ms. Pac-Man; my clerk Jon is the overall master. And I put them in chambers intentionally, for a few reasons. I really want a relaxed atmosphere in chambers. I think one of the most important things to surviving as a lawyer is that you can have a stressful job, you can do excellent work, and you can do it while nonetheless keeping a calm, relaxed, fun atmosphere. You’re not always going to be having fun while you’re working, but in general, that’s the vibe I want in chambers, and that definitely helps. It helps with the clerks, it helps with the interns, it’s a great way to integrate interns—we have intern championships.
And then I also get to invite other chambers over. So every once in a while, we’ll invite a chambers over for drinks and Pac-Man, and we’ll have a “Chambers Off.” That’s a great way to get to know other judges and other clerks. And then also just sometimes if you’re in the middle of a heated hearing or a hard hearing and you have 10 minutes, and it’s not enough time to really do anything but too much time to just sit there, I’m often playing a few games of Ms. Pac-Man in the middle. Or if it’s a bad hearing, it’ll be Street Fighter, and I’m just trying to beat people up.
DL: Oh my gosh. That’s great.
So I am guessing that Ms. Pac-Man wasn’t quite her speed, but after law school, you clerked on the Second Circuit for Judge Amalya Kearse (who was actually a renowned bridge player). Did you take away anything from your clerkship experience with her that informs your work today? I know you were clerking at the appellate level, and now you’re a trial judge. But I’m curious about whether you learned certain things from Judge Kearse, who’s really a renowned jurist, that you bring to your work today.
AR: Well, first of all, she’s just brilliant. You can’t replicate that. I’m only as smart as I am, and she’s just flat-out brilliant. But it’s one thing to be brilliant, and it’s another thing to be brilliant and meticulous. And she’s brilliant and meticulous and thinks carefully about things, understands things. I think I’m prepared when I get on the bench, but I’m like a sloth compared to her. She never stepped foot in a courtroom where she wasn’t 1,001 percent prepared. And what I mean by that is there was one argument where she found a jurisdictional issue that no one had briefed and none of the other judges had found and we clerks hadn’t found. The main thing I learned—other than how to look at everything as carefully as humanly possible, because she would catch it if you didn’t, and that was a bad day for you, and I’ve had a lot of bad days—was just how important it is to be the most prepared person, or at least one of the most prepared people, in a courtroom, especially as a judge.
DL: And I think that carried over into your next job: after clerking, you joined Williams & Connolly, where you spent more than 20 years. You mentioned something about your interview for the firm—did you want to share that?
AR: As I said, of course I wanted to be at Williams & Connolly, since I was senior in high school; that was my thing. To get there, I thought I needed to go to a great school—and that’s one of the reasons I went to Harvard, and I worked hard to try to get there.
During OCI [On-Campus Interviewing], you have a gazillion interviews. For the Williams & Connolly interview, I was totally on top of it: suit and shirt were firmly pressed, dry-cleaned, brand-new pantyhose, another set of pantyhose in my briefcase in case anything happened. And as it turned out, I was TA’ing a class, and the class ran over, and I had to get from the law school down to where the hotel is, which I’m sure you know is a few blocks down, and I was running late. I had left my suit at the Law Review House, so I went downstairs to the restroom, changed out of my suit real quick, and literally was knocking on the door of the hotel room right as it was time for my interview.
I was interviewing with Dane Butswinkas, who has now become an incredibly good friend of mine, but he was the first person from Williams & Connolly I’d ever met, actually, having thought about this now for five or six years. And because I’d done enough interviews by now to know, it became very obvious to me, very quickly, that nothing I was saying was interesting to this guy; I was just not making any impact.
So Dane said to me, “Tell me something that’s interesting to you, or about you, that’s not on your résumé.” And I thought to myself, “Well, I’ve blown this interview—I might as well talk about what I actually want to talk about.” I was a big fan of Star Trek: Voyager, and the day before there had been this episode, and what I’m about to tell you is basically what I said to him and very quickly, which was, “I love Voyager, this Star Trek thing. They got this Borg, who was a robotic person, and they take her off of the Borg, and so then she becomes human, but she’s learning about emotions for the first time and she doesn’t want to; she likes being a Borg and having no emotions. And they bring this family on board and she starts to really enjoy being with them, and she’s having a great time, and she’s saying, ‘Oh, this is why we have emotions—this is great!’ But then they had to drop off the family, and then she’s bereft and sad. And she’s talking to Captain Janeway, she’s like, ‘This is total BS. Why do we want these emotions? Now I just feel sad. That’s horrible.’” And so I talked about the philosophical underpinnings of that conversation between Janeway and Seven of Nine.
Great. All right. So as he’s ushering me out the door, he says two things to me—which he denies, in all fairness, but he absolutely said this—one, he said, “Don’t worry if you don’t get a summer-associate offer, because for summer-associate positions, we only have a limited number of people we can take from each school. But for first-years, we can take as many people from each school as we want. So if you don’t get the summer-associate offer and you’re interested, please apply again.” That’s probably not great. And then he also says, “I will get back to you in a few weeks.” And I thought to myself, “Fly-out week is next week! Okay….”
So I go back to the Law Review, and the Law Review is on the second floor of a house, and I go upstairs, and we’re always talking about the interview of the day, and Williams & Connolly was the interview of the day. And I say to my friends, “Did they tell you that they take only so many people from each school?” They’re like, “No.” “Did they tell you that you’d hear from them in a few weeks?” And they say, “No.” So I’m totally dejected.
So I’m walking down the stairs and one of my friends says, “Ana, I think you’ve got paint on the back of your leg.” I was like, “What?” And I look around and when I’d been changing the bathroom, a whole line of toilet paper had been caught in my calf, between my calf and my pantyhose, and I just died. I’ll never forget it. It was pouring outside—when they’re like, “it was a dark and stormy night,” this was a dark and stormy night—it was totally pouring. I lived about a quarter of a mile from the school, I had an umbrella with me, and I refused to open the umbrella. I was like, “You don’t even deserve to have an umbrella open.” So I just walked home in the pouring rain.
And then I did get a call back, and I did get a summer associate offer, and I asked Dane at some point, “You must be a big Star Trek fan?” And he’s like, “No—I think you all are nerds.” And I said, “Well, in my whole interview, that’s all I talked about.” He said, “You were the only person the entire day who was genuinely interested in what they were talking about. I could see what you would be and what you would be able to do in front of a jury.”
To this day, Star Trek saved my entire career—and I think it’s actually great interview advice, and I’ve given it a lot. Because at the end of the day, when you’re in an interview, if you’re in the interview, your résumé has gotten you to the interview. And at that point, they’re just trying to figure out if they want you on the island or not. We always do “The LAX Test”: would you fly with someone from DCA to LAX? It’s a five-hour flight. Almost any interview you take, whether they’re thinking about it or not, they’re doing The LAX test: do I want to sit next to this person for five hours?
DL: Wow. That is a great story. And I think it is so important to demonstrate interest in these interviews. Years ago, when I was doing an interview for the firm I eventually ended up going to, Wachtell, I just ended up bonding over intricacies of bankruptcy law, just totally nerding out, with this bankruptcy partner. And I think he just thought, “Wow, you seem really interested in this. This is great.”
Anyway, Joe Petrosinelli, who’s now the chairman of the firm, recounted a funny story at your investiture about how when you returned to Williams & Connolly after your clerkship, on your first day as an associate, you went in there and just asked him, point-blank, “What does it take to make partner here?" That was a very “gunner” thing of you to say!
AR: In fairness, I have no recollection of this—I clearly made an impression, so I was surprised and laughing at myself. I had been a summer at the firm, and I’d worked with him over the summer, and between the summer and when I started, he’d become a partner. And so that’s probably why I asked this of him in particular. But no, I wanted to know—I wanted to be a partner at Williams & Connolly.
DL: So I am curious—not all associates these days aspire to make partner, there are many different paths in the law—but for those associates who do aspire to make partner, based on your own experience, what advice might you give them?
AR: First of all, if you’re starting at a law firm, whether or not you want to make partner, you should act every day as if you want to make partner, for a few reasons. First, even if you think you know absolutely with every fiber of your being that you don’t want to stay at that law firm, there is a chance that three or four years in, you will want to stay. I cannot tell you the number of people I know who surprised themselves by wanting to stay. And if you start at year three or four, it’s too late.
Second, if you do leave in three or four years, you are going to want to make an impression—and a good impression. If I am seeing someone out the door at three or four years who’s done great work for me, but has just basically been dialing it in—appropriately, not shirking their duties, but dialing it in, comparatively—I will certainly give them a good review, and if people call, I will certainly talk to those people, but I’m not going to go out of my way to call my friends about them. But if someone’s been doing partner-level, phenomenal work for me for three or four years, I’m going to go out of my way and work for them. And of course, if you want to make partner, you should start acting like that from day one.
My number-one piece of advice that I give everyone is to be a team player. There is no substitute for 24/7 being a team player. If the team needs you, be there. Don’t be grumpy about it. If someone you don’t know needs help and you can help, give them help. If someone’s in a total pinch and you had tickets to go to the ballgame that day, but you know they’re in a pinch, don’t go to the ballgame, help them out.
Now, I don’t mean be the person stuck on a Friday night doing all the work because everyone’s taking advantage of you; that’s not what I mean. If there’s a legitimate need that this person has, put the team first. And even if you think it’s a zero-sum game, even if you think putting the team first will not advance your career the way that you want it advanced, and at that particular moment you might get some other benefit from doing something else, put the team first—because inevitably, over time, it will always come back to you.
First of all, you will have people who will have your back. There will be times when you’re going to be in a pinch, and someone else has a ballgame to go to. There are going to be times when you’re in a pinch and there are people who could go do their own thing and help their own careers as opposed to helping you, and you’re going to want their help. And more than that, look, whenever I’m putting together a team, I don’t put people on a team who I don’t think are team players; I don’t care how good they are. I have passed over working with phenomenally talented people who I just know will not put the team first; I just won’t do it. Because at the end of the day, no one can win a case alone. You can lose a case alone, but you can’t win a case alone. It takes a team, and it takes a team that’s functioning, on all levels, together.
DL: Yep, that’s great advice. So I’m curious, you had a very successful practice at Williams & Connolly—you did a lot of cross-border and international-arbitration work—but you also did extensive pro bono work, which came up quite a bit, for example, at your confirmation hearings, including a number of asylum cases with harrowing facts. I know you’ve worked on so many of these cases, and so many of them are so important to the individuals. Among these pro bono representations, is there a matter of which you’re most proud, or that stands out to you for being memorable for one reason or another?
AR: Yeah, for sure. The first asylum case I did will always be very dear to my heart. It involved a woman in a small village in Egypt. She had had female genital mutilation (FGM) committed against her. She didn’t want it against her daughters. For her first daughter, the mother and father refused to let the women—it’s women who do it—come and do it. And at some point in time, the father had to leave for work for a week or something, and they came to her house, they tied up the mother, they tied up the girl, they took a dirty knife, and they just cut off her clitoris. And then they put the girl outside—this is what they do—with an eggplant next to her, to signify that she had the FGM done to her.
And then they had a second daughter, and they didn’t want it to happen again, so they left, and they came to the U.S. Because of other cases, the FGM was the basis to seek asylum, but also we just had to actually prove everything that I just told you. I was a very young lawyer, I think I was a first- or second-year associate, and I worked with the woman and her family, with the kids running around. We met all the time—it was at least once a week, at least for a year. And at every single meeting that we had, I would ask at the end of it, to the mother—the father was there, he was very involved, he was talking, he wasn’t being overbearing, but he would have questions—and at the end of literally every single meeting, I would say to her, “Do you have any questions for me?” And every single time she said, “No.”
It became like a running joke—we would just all laugh about it, including her, how she would say no. The day before the asylum hearing, I said jokingly, “Do you have any questions?” And she said, “Yes.” And she had a couple questions, and she asked them. And I realized in that moment that I was a lawyer, that this person had come to trust me as someone who was going to stand up for them—so much so that they were willing to do something that clearly was something that they were uncomfortable with, because I have no doubt that she had questions throughout the process. That was definitely a moment of, “Oh, yeah, you’re a lawyer. You have a job here.”
Then we did the hearing, and it was my first hearing—it was also special to me because it was the first time I examined a witness and did an opening—and the judge gave us asylum. And the mother just looked at me, because she didn’t know what happened, and I just gave her a huge thumbs-up—like two thumbs-up, just huge. And she got the biggest smile on your face that you’ve ever seen. I don’t think I’d seen her smile once the entire year. I cannot describe to you just how big the smile was or how impactful that feeling was for me. [Ed. note: Judge Reyes asked me to clarify that she did not handle this case on her own; a team at Williams & Connolly, including Zoe Poulson and Frank DiStefano, also worked on this matter.]
There have been—and I know this sounds incredibly corny, I get it—there have been many times in my career, in your career, in anyone’s legal career, when they’re like, “Why am I doing this? I just can’t do this anymore. It’s just not worth it.” And that moment has kept me going more than once.
And I’ve come to learn that when someone’s like, "Your goal is to be happy,” that’s not the goal, actually. Happy is ephemeral. You can’t be happy all the time; there’s just no way. What you can strive to do is be satisfied. And contrary to the Hamilton song, you can be satisfied, and you have to find whatever piece of your job gives you the internal satisfaction that you need. And for me, it was always the pro bono work. Does that mean I worked a couple of hundred hours more on top of an already busy schedule? Some years, absolutely. But does that mean I just felt internally satisfied with my career? Yes, in terms of the contribution I was making. I felt satisfied even with my paying clients, because I just love litigation. But in terms of feeling satisfied that I was making the contribution I wanted to be making to my community, that’s really why I kept doing it.
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So it’s interesting, in these asylum cases, you were representing people who were facing or subjected to persecution on account of certain characteristics or qualities of theirs. Turning to your own story, I believe you are the first Hispanic woman and the first openly LGBTQ individual to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Over your career as both a lawyer and now a judge, have any of these aspects of your identity affected your professional experience—or not really? Williams & Connolly is very famously described as a meritocracy, so maybe not within the firm. But I am curious whether these issues have surfaced from time to time, or whether you’ve ever been treated differently as a lawyer or a judge on account of some personal characteristic.
AR: Williams & Connolly absolutely is a meritocracy, no question. I lived it for 22 years. I didn’t know that though going in. Keep in mind, I had no lawyers in the family. I didn’t know anything about law firms. There was no Above the Law. There were no people chatting with each other about what different law firms are like, what it’s like to be at a law firm. So when I started, I was, I would now say, “closeted”—I think that’s the right word. I was out to a few close friends—it wasn’t like nobody knew—and my parents knew. But other than a handful of people, I was closeted, and I had every intention of staying that way.
I just didn’t think that you could be out at a law firm, not because anyone said anything; I just didn’t think you could be. I started coming out maybe when I was a second-year. I’m from Kentucky, and I had a Derby party. I invited a bunch of people over to my house for this Derby party, and I thought to myself, “I can’t invite people to my house and not tell them who I am.” So I went to everyone that I invited before the event and told them. And the uniform reaction was, “That’s awesome. Is there going to be food and alcohol?”
It was just a nothingburger for me at the firm. And then I don’t know, David, if you’ve had this experience or what your story was, but when you come out, you’re like, “Oh, I’m out,” but you’re not out because it’s not like you issue a press release. It’s not like there’s something on the New York ticker saying, “Ana Reyes is gay.” So you have to come out more than once. You have to come out a lot of times. And there were many times when I had wished for a press release, just to get it over with and have everyone know. As it turns out, becoming a gay federal judge who is put on a nationally important case involving LGBTQ rights is pretty much a press release to the entire nation. Now that that’s happened, I don’t think anyone who is paying attention doesn’t know that I’m gay. So it took only 22 years.
The other thing is that when I was a first-year associate or still closeted, if someone had come down and said, “Absolutely one of two things is going to happen in your career, you’re going to be on the first manned mission to Mars or you’re going to be a federal judge,” I would not have thought about it at all. I would been like, “Seems like they’re sending the gays to Mars in 22 years!” There was just no concept in my mind that I would ever be able to be nominated by a president and confirmed by a Senate. So people have often said to me, “Did you always want to be a judge?” And it’s a great gig—it’s just a terrific job, and I’m incredibly privileged and fortunate to have it—but it’s not anything I ever aspired to or thought would happen.
To go from feeling that to having anybody think, from The New York Times to Fox News to whoever talks about my work, sometimes talking about me being gay and sometimes not, it’s been quite the 20-year span. And I’m very thankful for that, obviously. And I will say that I think probably the next follow-up question people have, and I don’t mean to be doing your job for you, but the next follow-up question people usually have is, “Does that impact your work on the bench?” And my response is always, “No.” I don’t go on a bench and think, “What’s the gay way to interpret a contract?” I’m just interpreting the contract. And even with cases I’ve had involving LGBTQ rights, nothing I’m doing is to support LGBTQ rights at all. I call the thing down the middle, like I see it. And if I get a case where me calling it down the middle like I see it means issuing a ruling that would be detrimental to LGBTQ rights, because the law is just what it is and my job is to enforce it, I would do that. And I would feel sick about it, but I would do it.
The way it impacts my work on the bench is that I do think it matters for representation. I have done numerous events over the last couple of years, and I have yet to go to a single event where afterwards someone, and usually more than one person, hasn’t come up to me and said, “It’s really important for me to see someone in your position, someone like me.” I have been surprised by that, to be honest; I would’ve thought that by 2025, it wouldn’t be that odd or such a novelty. But apparently it still is, because people talk to me about it. So I do think that the job is a privilege, and part of my job as a gay Hispanic woman is to provide that representation. And one of the reasons I’m doing this podcast is that whenever I get asked to speak, assuming that my schedule is open, I say yes.
DL: Let’s now turn to your time on the bench. I won’t refer to any specific cases, some of which are still pending, but you’ve received some news coverage for putting lawyers through their paces. Do you consider yourself a tough judge? And where do you draw the line between properly holding lawyers’ feet to the fire and being overly harsh or crossing some line?
AR: I think a lot of people appropriately would say that I’m a tough judge. I recognize that that’s how I come off. To me, being well-prepared and asking questions and expecting answers is the job. It’s just what I do. And sometimes that’s tough. If I’m on the bench, as I learned from Judge Kearse, I am thoroughly prepared. I have read everything. I have read every case. I have read all of the briefs, often more than once. I’ve done my own legal research.
My clerks do not give me bench memos because I do all of the work. I obviously talk to my clerks about the cases and they draft the opinions, but I don’t need them to summarize the work for me because I’ve done it. And because I was a litigator for so long, what I have after the work is a lot of questions. So when we get to argument, I always say the same thing, which is, “I have a lot of questions. I want them answered. I was a lawyer long enough to know when people are not answering a question. And I’m going to cut you off if that happens because I’m just trying to get to the point. And then after I ask all of my questions, I will let you speak as long as you want.”
And I’ve never cut off anybody. We don’t have time limits on hearings. Usually by the time we’ve gotten through the discussion of all my questions, then they don’t have a lot more to say—but sometimes they do, and I let them speak. But first I just want the answers to my questions. I need them for a reason; I’m not asking questions just to ask them. And that can be tough, for sure, especially if I’m cutting you off, because I’m trying to get you to answer a question. I’m sure that can be frustrating.
Winston Churchill, who I have a gazillion biographies of back behind me and in chambers, once famously said, “Please, sir, stop trying to interrupt me while I’m interrupting you.” And I think I could have fairly said that to many litigants, to my chagrin. So in that sense, I’m definitely tough.
The other question is, what’s the difference between being tough and being overly harsh? To me, putting tough aside, there’s a difference between being harsh and being overly harsh—and sometimes, people deserve harsh. And sometimes, I think you’ve pointed out a couple of times, David, fairly and rightfully, I’ve stepped over the line inappropriately, perhaps to overly harsh. And I’ve thought about that. There have been times I’ve come off the bench and thought, “You went overboard. You should have not behaved that way.” And this might sound surprising to many people, but I do think about it a lot when it happens.
I’m a rookie judge. I’ve gotten a lot of press attention because I’ve had a lot of high-profile cases, but remember, I’ve been doing this for two and a half years—so I still have a lot of room to grow in a lot of areas of improvement, and that’s certainly one of them. But I have given a lot of thought to when I feel like I’ve been overly harsh, why has that happened? And it’s inevitably always the same thing.
I don’t mind people making bad arguments. Sometimes as a lawyer, you just have bad arguments, and the best you can do is make a bad argument as well as you can. That doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me if someone who is prepared doesn’t have all the answers. I don’t even expect them to; it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t even usually bother me if people aren’t prepared. I might say, “Why aren’t you prepared?” But I won’t do whatever. Anytime I feel like maybe I was overly harsh is when someone is making an argument that I know they know is in bad faith, that they’re doing it disingenuously, that they are making an argument that for me to accept, they have to believe I’m stupid, I’m naive, or I’m just not paying attention. If they’re making that kind of argument, that I feel is when I really just come down on them, because they know what they’re doing, and they know better, and they’re doing it anyway.
I’ll give you a prime example of this. This case is totally closed, so I can talk about it. It was the House subpoena case where the DOJ during Biden’s term had criminally tried two people for not responding to a House deposition subpoena, arguing that not showing up in and of itself violated the law, regardless of intent, regardless of anything—just not showing up violated the law. I pulled the transcripts from the criminal cases, I pulled the opening arguments, I pulled the closing—when I say I read everything, I read everything. And then in my case, the House had issued subpoenas when they came in power to the Biden DOJ for two of the lawyers to show up for a deposition from the House. So it was exactly the same situation; there’s literally no difference, other than what foot the shoe was on now. And DOJ just refused to show up, like, “No, we don’t have to”—that struck me as hypocrisy, just flat-out hypocrisy. I think one thing anyone would fairly say about me is that you always know where you stand with me. You know how I’m thinking about things, which I think is good for clients because they can value settlement—and that’s a whole other conversation. But that’s the kind of thing where if something like that has happened, usually the press comes.
And then I will say the following, also: because I was a lawyer for so long, I know how much work goes into an argument. If you’ve never done it, you just have no concept of how much work goes into an argument, much less a high-profile one, much less like a day or an evidentiary hearing. It’s just immense—the work, the stress, the hours, the things that you think about, the things that you worry about, the gazillions of emails while you’re trying to write. And so I’m actually quite good about complimenting people and lawyers if they’ve done a good job. I do it often. I especially encourage clients to let their younger people argue. And if a young person has argued and they’ve done a terrific job—which is usually the case, actually—on a number of occasions, I’ve said to the supervising partner, “I’m ordering you to tell your associate evaluation committee that that your associate did a terrific job.” And I don’t go easy on them—so if it’s particularly hard questioning, I’ll say that too, that they stood up well to particularly tough questioning.
But “Judge Slams Lawyer” gets a lot of headlines because it gets a lot of clicks, and “Judge Compliments Lawyer” gets zero headlines. If I so much as say a word that can arguably be described as negative to a lawyer, there are headlines everywhere. I have praised lawyers up and down, and nothing ever gets printed. And not that it should—I’m not saying that’s newsworthy, I’m just saying that what happens is it provides a skewed view of what happens in anyone’s courtroom. It’s not just me that is impacted by this; there are lots of judges who, if you just read the media, you might get a skewed view of how they are. Yes, I’m a tough judge. Yes, I’m trying to do better. And sometimes I should be tough, and sometimes I should do better.
DL: Well, I have a couple of thoughts on this. It’s commendable for you to acknowledge this because I think some of your colleagues, especially the ones who’ve been on the bench longer, may have that so-called “Black Robe-itis” disorder and believe that being a federal judge means never having to say you’re sorry or that you might’ve been wrong. So I commend you for that.
I also agree with you that there is a skew in the coverage. And some of us in the media may be to blame here because we know what gets clicks, we know what gets engagement. “Judge Benchslaps Lawyer” is going to get clicks and readership, and “Judge Compliments Lawyer,” as you have done for some lawyers of the Trump DOJ—nah, people aren’t as interested in that. That’s just, “Oh, well, isn’t that nice?” People want the drama; they want the fighting. So I agree with you that there is a skew.
AR: I don’t eat meat—I eat seafood, but I don’t eat meat, and I haven’t for about 25 years. And there was once a cartoon featuring all the Sesame Street characters, and there was Big Bird. He was basically the fried turkey; you just saw his big feet. And it said, “Happy Thanksgiving.” And I sent it to my mom because she always makes fun of me for not eating meat. And my mom, The Lilliam—we could talk for hours about her, she’s terrific, we all call her “The Lilliam”—she writes back, “I am sorry for the Big Bird. Is life.” And so my best friends and I, whenever anything happens, we’re like, “Is life.” The media being skewed is very much an “Is life” kind of thing; it is what it is.
I think it’s really important for anyone to recognize things that they can improve on and if they’ve been wrong. And if I’m wrong, and I’ve been wrong on the bench, I will say I was wrong. I’m not someone who just doubles down. If I’m wrong, I’ll say it, because I think that that’s helpful to everybody.
DL: Turning to current events, some judges, including justices of the Supreme Court, have recently spoken out against threats directed at judges or possible erosion of judicial independence or the weaponization of impeachment. From where you sit, having handled a number of high-profile cases, do you share these concerns?
AR: I think it’s unfortunate, and I think that “death by a thousand cuts” is what I’m afraid of. That’s what a lot of judges are concerned about in terms of judicial independence, because it is one of the bedrocks of our society. So it’s certainly something that we think about and we talk about. I can say this, without any hesitation: zero that anyone has said has intimidated anyone, on my court anyway—absolutely none. We’re there to do a job, and we’re going to do the job and tune everything else out. Is it stressful for people, especially a few judges who have gotten direct death threats, whose families have gotten threats? Yes, of course—it is such an unfortunate way that people have of acting.
I got enhanced security in the sense that social media and the dark web get checked for me every month or so usually, if you sign up for a program. I was getting checked every day, and there was one person on Twitter who actually put up pictures of my house, and I’ll tell you what he said. A lot of the anger comes from just not understanding things. He put up pictures of my house, and it was from Zillow, so it had what I paid for the house on it. And he rightfully said that I bought it when I was a law firm partner; I did not buy it on my judge’s salary. But then he said, “She should recuse herself from any case involving D.C., the government of D.C., because if the government of D.C. loses, her property value will go down. So she’s incentivized to have D.C. win."
First, that would be news to any D.C. government lawyer who’s ever been in front of me, and second, I went from making what a law firm partner makes to making what a federal judge makes. I think now I make less than a first-year associate at most law firms. If I was motivated by money, I wouldn’t be thinking, “My house’s property value might go up by five cents.” But my sense is that that guy actually believes that; I think he actually believes that I would think about that when making decisions. And people go crazy if they think a judge is making a decision because of her house—even if it’s ridiculous that he thinks it.
The thing that’s been most surprising to me is not how much hate mail I’ve gotten—because I’ve gotten a lot of hate mail and voicemails, the voicemails are unhinged, I don’t understand how people have this much time, they’ll leave countless voicemail messages in a row, and it’s just nothing but curse words—the thing that’s been surprising to me is that it has been equal-opportunity hate mail. The TRO case you mentioned earlier, where I ruled in favor of the Trump administration on a TRO—I’m going to write an essay one day, and it’s going to be called, “The Tale of Two Fridays.”
I’ll never forget this. It was a Friday, and I made my views clear as to how inappropriate I thought it was to issue a TRO against the administration, and that got a ton of press. The number of emails and voicemails that I got from people on the left about being a traitor and being a crap judge, and how could I ever get nominated, I can’t even tell you. Somebody left a voicemail message that said a bunch of curse words and then ended by saying, “You belong in a house robe, not a judicial robe.”
So the next Friday, there’s a lot of publication of stories about my view on a very highly publicized case in which I was ruling against the Trump administration. The Friday before, by the way, when the whole left thought I was a maniac and should be hung in some gallows, people on the right were singing my praises—I was so unbiased, I was the model Biden appointee. Next Friday, the liberal left, if they could, they would’ve given me sainthood status, they would’ve put me on the Supreme Court. And for people on the right, the gallows would’ve been too good for me.
I think it’s really unfortunate, and this is part of the skew: people are only looking at what’s immediately in front of them. They’re just thinking, “Is this person ruling the way I want them to, or are they not?” And that’s one of the most unfortunate things.
The other thing that’s been surprising to me is I’ve gotten—and I think a lot of judges now have gotten—it used to be only the hate, but now actually we’re getting a lot of really positive emails. I can’t tell you the number of letters I’ve gotten from people. At this point, it’s become cheering for your favorite sports team in some way.
DL: I think that’s right. People do think, “Are you wearing the red jersey, or the blue jersey?”
But let me ask you one question that’s a little bit different, and then we’ll go to the speed round. Most of my listeners are older than law students—I’ve been doing legal blogging and writing for a long time—but I do have some law students in the audience, and the students who read my work are disproportionately interested in the judiciary and clerking. So besides the usual things—strong academic performance, law school activities, recommendations—is there something you look for when hiring law clerks that’s a little different, or maybe off the beaten path?
AR: Yes. So every judge does it differently, and so much of what a judge does is formed by their personal experience. With some judges, all they care about is what school you went to and how high your grades were, and if you have excellent recommendations in terms of your writing skills. And that makes total sense. You want the smartest and brightest people, and you want the people who are phenomenal, Scalia-esque, Kagan-esque writers. We would all love that.
My view is that those people are going to get a gazillion opportunities. They’re going to get a gazillion clerkship offers. I’m not saying they have it easy, but they’re going to have a lot of doors open to them. I’m more interested in opening doors for others. Someone once said to me, “This is important—don’t you want to be a feeder judge to the Supreme Court?” I don’t care about being a feeder judge. I care about being a feeder judge to put people into litigation, people who are going to be excellent lawyers and who are going to know how to approach their careers both professionally and personally. That’s what I can offer.
So one of the things that I look for is if you want to be a trial lawyer. If you want to be an appellate lawyer—and appellate lawyers are almost always the smartest people in the room—I don’t think you’re going to get a lot out of working for me. I’m not a particularly strong writer. I don’t have any skills in appellate work. What I talk about all the time is litigation skills, because I can see things, and I can understand how things can be done better. I have a gazillion war stories, probably more than people care to hear about.
Another thing I care about is I care about people who have shown that they have a lot of grit. I did hiring at Williams & Connolly, where I was on the hiring committee. I did OCI at Harvard for, I think, eight or nine years in a row. I probably would have interviewed over, I don’t know, 1,000 people, certainly over 500. And the question I always ask is—and it became famous actually at Harvard, because people knew to expect it—in every single interview I ask, “What’s something that’s interesting to you or about you that’s not in any way, shape, or form on your résumé?”
It’s remarkable what you learn about people from that one simple question—about their families, things that have happened in their families, medical issues that they’ve had that they’ve overcome. Someone loved reading about Japanese teas on aircraft carriers—I didn’t know there was such a thing, but I’m a total World War II buff, so we had a great talk. And what I want for that question is not an “I was an orphan, and I was left out in the street for eight years” kind of thing, but more of, “I’ve shown that I’m interested in the community I’m in, and I’ve shown that I’m interested in more than just ticking off a bunch of boxes.”
DL: So turning to the speed round, my first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as an abstract system.
AR: Far and away the thing I least like about the law is how expensive it’s become and how much of an impact that has on people’s legal rights. Put aside criminal litigation for a moment and focus just on civil litigation. One of the reasons that I am focused on doing things quickly and getting cases done quickly and moving people quickly, and one of the reasons I may be considered a tough judge, is because I move people along very quickly. And that’s because if you have a legal team of three or four lawyers, they’re billing every six minutes, and it gets expensive. You know it better than I do, David, but I think even, what, six or seven years ago, it would be unheard of for any partner to be billing above $1,000. I think now any partner at a firm, even a relatively young partner, is billing over $1,000 an hour.
One thing I did in my head in the past—when I was an associate, and certainly when I was a partner—is I would try to figure out how much a hearing would cost, with all the lawyers, in terms of their time, or how much a motion to dismiss or a summary judgment motion would cost. You can have drafting a summary judgment motion in a complex case, plus a hearing, that could cost you half a million dollars, without blinking an eye. Even if it’s a non-complicated case, it can cost thousands of dollars. And I just think that’s unfortunate, because it means that people don’t have as many resources sometimes to vindicate their rights.
DL: Yep, so true. Access to justice is a major problem in the country.
My second question is—and maybe you touched on this at the beginning—but what would you be if you were not a lawyer, or in your case, a judge?
AR: Certainly not a cruise director, because I’d be homeless—I do not have the personality. I’ve really gotten interested in science in the last few years. I’ve really gotten interested in physics—not the math part of it, because I don’t do math—but basically any layperson book about physics, I will read. I’ve become totally obsessed with Albert Einstein, and so I’ve read up a ton on his work. So I think I would actually try to be a physicist if I weren’t a lawyer. I don’t know that I would have the math chops for it, and I couldn’t do it now, but if I was starting from scratch.
DL: Okay, great. My next question—and I don’t know how you find the time to do all the things you do, I should mention to my listeners that in addition to being a judge, you have done marathons and a triathlon, and you do Krav Maga, and you do rock climbing and all this other stuff, but somehow you find time to do your job and do it well—how much sleep do you get each night?
AR: Well, a lot more as a federal judge than I did as an associate and partner. One of the many wonderful things about being a judge is I set my own schedule. And so, right now, I get a good seven to eight hours. That’s amazing. When I was lawyer, not as much.
DL: And then my last question is, any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?
AR: So when I get asked about this, I always say the same three things. The number-one thing is don’t be an ***hole—just don’t. It’s a really small legal community; whatever legal community you’re in is really small. If you’re a jerk to other people, to opposing counsel, to staff, especially to staff, to whomever, they’re just going to be a jerk to you. Make your life easier. I hope most opposing counsel I worked with will say that I never jerked them around. If I said I was going to do something, I would do it; if I could compromise on something, I always did.
Second is to be a team player, which I talked about earlier. And the third thing is, you’re going to fail. You’re going to fail spectacularly. I have failures in high-profile cases as a lawyer that made the front-page headlines of the New York Times. It’s bad, and there is indeed a thing called bad press; it exists. And the main thing to remember is that it’s not—I think this is from Rocky or something—it’s not how hard you fall, it’s how well you get up. You have to get up, you have to dust off your pants, you have to take your licks, and you have to move on. And the main thing is try not to make the same mistake again.
I always hate getting introduced at events because it’s all about the great things people think I have done. You leave that introduction and you think, “My professional life has been a straight trajectory upward—like on an XY axis, it’s just been one line, a straight line to the top.” And that’s not how anyone’s career is. My stock graph, if you were to look at is, is you go up a little bit, you go down a little bit, you go up a little bit, you go down a little bit, you go up a bit, you crash—I’ve had some recessions, I’ve had some actual crashes—and you go back up. And the best that you can do is to start off higher than when you started.
DL: Well, that is very true. I totally agree. But I will say in your career, Judge, you have definitely been on an overall upward trajectory. Thank you so much for both joining me today and for all the hard work and important work you do on the bench.
AR: Thanks, David. It’s been a lot of fun.
DL: Thanks so much to Judge Reyes for joining me—and thanks to her and her colleagues on the bench for the important work they do to protect the rule of law. While we might disagree with individual rulings, I think it’s fair to say that on the whole, the federal judiciary is acquitting itself very well during challenging times.
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