Judicial Notice (07.05.26): Born In The U.S.A.
Justice Barrett makes MAGA mad, Biglaw partners sue their former firm, and Paul Weiss makes another big hire—in litigation.
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I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day. As a birthright citizen of this great nation, I had something extra to celebrate this year: the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to all of us who are born in the United States, regardless of our parents’ citizenship when we were born.
Work kept me busy last week. I followed the issuance of the Court’s final opinions in argued cases from October Term 2025. I did a fair amount of reporting for an exciting Bloomberg Law column and recorded a fun podcast episode, which will both appear next week. And I published two posts, which you should check out if you haven’t already: Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Justice Alito’s Non-Retirement and 4 Takeaways From The Birthright Citizenship Decision (which was picked up by Andrew Sullivan’s Weekly Dish and SCOTUStoday—thanks to them for the links).
When readers meet me in person, they sometimes say, apologetically, that they don’t read everything I write. While writers can be vain creatures (and I include myself in this indictment), I don’t expect folks to read every story of mine. I’m unusual among legal journalists in the breadth of topics I cover; different people read me for different reasons, and the Biglaw readers aren’t necessarily interested in SCOTUS (and vice versa). But I do have a small request: even if you don’t read every post, please open my emails before archiving or deleting them, which keeps my open rate high and improves deliverability. (If you’d like to give me a belated birthday present, go back through your inbox and open a few old emails from me.)
I didn’t do much outside of work last week, other than try to stay cool. If your air conditioning isn’t working as well as expected, check the filters—and if they’re dirty, change them. I was embarrassed to discover that one of our filters hadn’t been changed in three years. How did I know this? Whenever I change the filters, I take a Sharpie pen and write the date on the filter’s edge. (Every now and then, I offer random practical advice in Judicial Notice—such as financial housekeeping tips or a recommendation to track down your unclaimed property.)
Now, on to the news.
Lawyers of the Week: Cliff Cone and Michael Sabin.
In January, funds lawyers Cliff Cone and Michael Sabin made news when they left Clifford Chance, where they had co-led the U.S.-based funds and investment management group, and joined the New York office of Sidley Austin. Now they’re in the news again—not as lateral partners, but as plaintiffs.
Represented by Duane Morris, the two partners are suing Clifford Chance, the U.K.-headquartered firm where they previously worked. Their lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, offers an interesting window into the world of Biglaw in 2026, including issues of partner compensation and lateral movement.
Cone and Sabin left Clifford Chance in early January. In early March, Clifford Chance global managing partner Charles Adams sent them nearly identical letters, announcing the firm’s intent to claw back almost $4.4 million from Cone and $1.4 million from Sabin. Why? Under Clifford Chance’s global and U.S. partnership agreements, “some partners who leave for a competitor can have their compensation recalculated as if they held fewer partnership units during the prior three years,” as Sara Randazzo explained in her column for Reuters.
In their 14-page complaint, Cone and Sabin argue that the clawback provisions are unenforceable because “New York law prohibits the enforcement of law firm partnership agreement terms which impose financial disincentives, penalties, or claw backs of already-earned or paid compensation against partners withdrawing from a law firm to join a competing firm.” While they accept that their dispute with Clifford Chance must be resolved through mediation or arbitration, as provided for by the partnership agreements, their lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that New York law—not English law—should apply to these proceedings.
In the view of Cone, Sabin, and their lawyers at Duane Morris, application of New York law “will likely be outcome dispositive with respect to the enforceability of the claw back and forfeiture provisions” that Clifford Chance is pushing. They include as an exhibit to their complaint a recent ethics opinion from the New York City Bar Association, which declares that “law firms may not impose financial penalties or disincentives” upon lawyers who leave for competitors; such penalties run afoul of ethics rules “designed to preserve (i) a lawyer’s right to practice and (ii) ensure a client’s freedom and ability to select a lawyer of his or her choice.”
Cone and Sabin’s lawsuit is assuredly unusual, but I wonder whether someday we’ll look back on them as starting a trend. With lateral partner movement running high and partner pay continuing to climb, don’t be surprised to see more battles between partners and the firms they leave behind. As legal recruiters told Law.com, firms are increasingly playing hardball with partners who defect to competitors—especially if the firm losing the talent paid the departing partner a big pay package to join. As the old saying goes, “Mo money, mo problems.”
Other lawyers in the news:
Goldman Sachs is (finally) moving on from its former chief legal officer and general counsel, Kathryn “Kathy” Ruemmler: it named Michael Bosworth, currently a deputy general counsel at the bank, as acting GC. Bosworth seems to have all the right credentials: he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Breyer), was a partner at Latham & Watkins, and is not known to have accepted $9,400 handbags from pedophiles.
Here’s a fun Bloomberg Law profile of William Savitt—co-chair of the executive committee at Wachtell Lipton, co-chair of the firm’s litigation department, and Elon Musk’s least-favorite litigator (having defeated the gazillionaire twice, in Twitter v. Musk and Musk v. Altman). When he addresses a jury, Savitt believes it’s important “to be approachable, to be informal, to speak in a vocabulary that isn’t overly lawyerly”; but in speaking to journalist Isaiah Poritz for this article, he did drop the word “aleatory” (which apparently means “depending on an uncertain event or contingency” or “relating to luck”—thanks to Bill Savitt for teaching me a new vocabulary word!).
In memoriam:
Prominent plaintiffs’ lawyer Paul Napoli, founder of New York-based Napoli Shkolnik, passed away at 58.
Judah Gribetz—who served as counsel to Governor Hugh Carey (D-N.Y.) during New York City’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s, helping NYC avoid financial collapse—passed away at 97.
May they rest in peace.
Judge of the Week: Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump v. Barbara came down last Tuesday, along with the Court’s final two opinions in argued cases from October Term 2025: West Virginia v. B.P.J., upholding state laws prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, and National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, holding unconstitutional a provision of federal election law limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for elected office. These decisions were nicely summed up by a friend who texted me last Monday, after the opinions issued that day made clear what we’d be getting on Tuesday: “The final case of the Term is about whether a trans baby of an illegal alien born in the United States can contribute money to federal elections.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett was in the majority in all three of these headline-making cases—just as she was in 89% 92% of the Court’s decisions in merit cases in OT 2025. This made her the #3 justice most often in the majority—behind only Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh (tied at 95%), according to SCOTUSblog’s invaluable Stat Pack for the 2025-2026 Term. [UPDATE (7/7/2026, 10:28 a.m.): Fixed to use the correct percentages for OT 2025: the Chief and Justice Kavanaugh at 95%, then Justice Barrett at 92%. The percentages that I initially published—95% for the Chief, 92% for Justice Kavanaugh, and 89% for Justice Barrett—were for OT 2024.]
Justice Barrett’s vote in Barbara disappointed—or even infuriated—some conservatives. So did her vote in the tariffs decision and her majority opinion last Monday in Watson v. Republican National Committee, in which she and Chief Justice Roberts joined with the three liberal justices in holding that federal law doesn’t prevent Mississippi from allowing the counting of absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days later. As a Fox News headline put it, “Conservatives revolt after Trump-appointed Barrett joins liberals in ‘shockingly wrong’ mail ballot ruling.” See also this Times article, “Amy Coney Barrett Faces Right-Wing Ire Over Recent Rulings,” and this conversation between Times writers Emily Bazelon and David French, “Amy Coney Barrett Is the Lightning Rod” (in which they discussed—but disagreed with—what French referred to as an “out of control,” potentially “dangerous” MAGA backlash against Barrett).
But Justice Barrett had her defenders, who noted that her overall record remains quite conservative. In OT 2025 alone, she voted in favor of the Republican or conservative outcome in B.P.J. (transgender athletes) and NRSC v. FEC (campaign finance laws), discussed above; Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook, concerning Trump’s efforts to fire Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter (green light) and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook (red light, at least for now); Louisiana v. Callais, the landmark Voting Rights Act case; Mullin v. Doe and Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, a pair of major immigration cases; and Wolford v. Lopez and United States v. Hemani, two rulings that came out in favor of Second Amendment claims.
As Professor Brian Fitzpatrick told Reuters, “To expect any justice to always vote the way that we wish things were, it's just complete fantasy, and it misunderstands the entire enterprise.” Or as the editors of National Review noted, looking at Justice Barrett’s record before OT 2025, she “has stood courageously with her colleagues in one landmark conservative victory after another,” in cases that overruled Roe v. Wade, ended racial preferences in higher education, and reined in the administrative state. In sum, they concluded that even if “we don’t always agree with her,” ACB “is an outstanding justice and a key contributor to an outstanding Court.”
Runner-up for Judge of the Week: Chief Justice Roberts. The end of a Term brings with it evaluations of the Supreme Court—and, of course, the Chief Justice as its leader. For critiques of the current conservative Court—and, implicitly, Chief Justice Roberts—see the views of Professors Kate Shaw and Steve Vladeck in this spirited debate in The Times (gift link).
I call it a “spirited debate” because of the vigorous pushback that Shaw and Vladeck received from Professor Will Baude (who clerked for the Chief). See also this post at Executive Functions by Professor Jack Goldsmith—no fan of the Trump administration—titled “The Powerful, Resilient, Independent Supreme Court.” Or if Goldsmith is too conservative a commentator for your tastes, check out this staff editorial by The Washington Post (gift link), “The Supreme Court’s not-so-MAGA majority.”
Whether or not you agree with most of the Supreme Court’s rulings or its overall direction, it’s hard to dispute that Chief Justice Roberts is extremely influential these days. After Justice Barrett replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Chief lost some of his power; he was no longer the “swing vote,” and the five conservatives could take actions—like overruling Roe—without his support.
But now, thanks in part to the aggressiveness of the current administration’s agenda, it can sometimes be hard for Trump to muster up five votes—making the Chief once again a key vote. And because of his seniority, the Chief also wields power through his ability to assign opinions—including to himself, in key cases such as Barbara, Cook, Slaughter, and Learning Resources v. Trump (aka tariffs). So the Roberts Court is, once again, Roberts’s Court. As Adam Liptak put it in his newsletter, The Docket, “The Term was a triumph for Chief Justice John Roberts, who was in all but complete control of a Court that had not long ago threatened to slip from his grasp.”
In other news about judges and the judiciary:
If Bad Bunny can play the Super Bowl Halftime Show, maybe he can perform a private concert for SCOTUS—because he has at least one fan at One First Street. As Amy Howe reported for SCOTUSblog, the justices released their latest financial disclosures, and the most interesting tidbit was Justice Sonia Sotomayor receiving concert tickets valued at more than $4,000, to attend a show while “on a private trip to Puerto Rico in August 2025.” She didn’t identify the artist—but the tickets were provided by the record company representing Bad Bunny, and it was previously reported that she had attended one of his concerts.
Even after Nina Totenberg and NPR retracted their report that Justice Samuel Alito was stepping down from the Court, retirement rumors persist. But sources close to the justice “insisted,” to Abbie VanSickle and Ann E. Marimow of The Times (gift link), that no retirement announcement is forthcoming—and Justice Alito is “expected to be on the bench in October.”
Justice Alito didn’t retire on Tuesday, but do you know who did? Mark Sherman, who did great work covering the Supreme Court for the Associated Press for 20 years. Sherman reflected on his two decades at One First Street in a final AP piece (via Howard Bashman’s How Appealing).
In nominations news, Donald Trump announced two judicial picks: Judge Anna St. John (E.D. La.), for the Fifth Circuit, and Alabama Supreme Court Justice Gregory Cook, for the Northern District of Alabama. I wasn’t surprised by St. John’s nomination, having previously identified her as a strong contender. One advantage of picking her is that, assuming she’s confirmed, Trump will be able to fill her seat on the district court—perhaps with Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguiñaga or Department of Veterans Affairs General Counsel James Baehr, both possibilities for the Fifth Circuit nomination that went to Judge St. John.
In memoriam:
Judge Rosemary Collyer (D.D.C.)—who presided over a number of notable national-security cases, and who led Crowell & Moring as its chair before taking the bench in 2002—passed away at 80.
Judge David Doty (D. Minn.)—who played a major role in shaping the modern National Football League, through his oversight of a 1993 class-action settlement between the NFL and its players—passed away at 96.
May they rest in peace.
Job of the Week: an opportunity for a funds/investment management associate in Chicago.
Lateral Link is spearheading an unposted search for a prominent Am Law 100 firm seeking a funds/investment-management associate to join its close-knit, supportive team in Chicago. The firm seeks an associate with 4+ years of fund-formation/transactional experience to play a leading role representing asset managers, hedge funds, private-equity firms, and other global market participants. The group is highly collaborative and deeply invested in its people, offering top-of-the-market compensation and a hybrid work schedule. For immediate consideration, please email your résumé to Zain Atassi at zatassi@laterallink.com.
