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Greetings from Provincetown, Massachusetts. I’ll be here with Zach and our two boys for the next week or so, attending LGBTQ Family Week. I’ll be following the news and checking email and social media while on vacation—but if I’m even slower than my usual slow self in responding, it’s because we’re at the beach.
Speaking of children, if you have kids in middle school or high school who’d like to learn more about law or journalism, feel free to share with them my recent appearance on Edutainment Learning. It’s a nice program that features speakers from a wide range of fields and lets students ask us about our careers.
Now, on to the news.
Lawyer of the Week: Tom Goldstein.
In January 2025, former Supreme Court advocate and SCOTUSblog co-founder Tom Goldstein was indicted on 22 tax and false-statement charges. Federal prosecutors claimed that Goldstein earned millions from playing high-stakes poker games against celebrities and business tycoons—and that he didn’t pay taxes on his winnings.
Over the next year, Goldstein’s battle with federal prosecutors transfixed the legal elite. It culminated in a dramatic jury trial that began in January 2026, featuring testimony from Hollywood actor Tobey Maguire, with whom Goldstein played poker (and also represented as a client), plus Goldstein himself. In the end, Goldstein’s biggest gamble didn’t pay off: he was convicted on 12 of 16 counts.
Last Friday, Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby (D. Md.) sentenced Goldstein to six years in prison and ordered him to pay $3.1 million in restitution. At the end of the sentencing hearing, which lasted more than six hours, Goldstein was taken into custody—asked to remove his necktie and shoelaces, then led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
The six-year sentence was less than the eight years sought by the prosecution, but more than the zero years requested by the defense (which instead asked for a lengthy period of supervision or home confinement). It was also more than the five years the prosecution proposed when it engaged in plea discussions with Goldstein (at least according to what Goldstein told Jeffrey Toobin of The New York Times (gift link)).
I think most observers would agree with what one reader of mine opined on X: it’s a sad turn of events for someone who, despite his personal weaknesses and misdeeds, also did a lot of good. Goldstein devoted about a third of his practice to pro bono work, mentored law students and young lawyers, and founded SCOTUSblog—which Judge Griggsby praised as a “groundbreaking” resource that “has really reshaped our legal community and how we talk about the law.” As someone whose entry into legal blogging and journalism was inspired in part by SCOTUSblog—as well as other early blogs that are still going strong today, like Howard Bashman’s How Appealing and Eugene Volokh’s Volokh Conspiracy—I certainly owe Goldstein a debt of gratitude.
Other lawyers in the news:
In other news about SCOTUS advocates, Jeremy Feigenbaum is stepping down as solicitor general of New Jersey after six successful—and eventful—years in the role. For a retrospective of his tenure, see David Wildstein’s New Jersey Globe piece. Feigenbaum hasn’t announced his next job, but he’s expected to enter private practice—and his timing is good, given the active market for appellate talent (reflected in the latest Move of the Week, discussed below).
Sigh. It’s my job to let my readers know about what people in the legal world are talking about—so I feel obliged to flag the viral video purporting to show a make-out session in Central Park between a Wachtell Lipton partner and associate (“purporting” because in the age of AI, I can’t vouch for what’s real and what’s a deepfake). I’m troubled by the idea of filming and disseminating encounters like this one, and I don’t want to join the pile-on, so I’m intentionally not naming them. Further affiant sayeth naught. (If you want to watch the video for yourself or read more about the participants, I can’t stop you from visiting the many outlets with circulations far larger than this humble newsletter’s that have picked up the story.) [UPDATE (7/28/2026, 11:17 p.m.): This scandal has now transcended TikTok and the tabloids, making it into the Financial Times. The FT broke the news of six litigation partners leaving Wachtell Lipton, including firm co-chair William “Bill” Savitt, for Gibson Dunn—and its story about the move included this detail: “The group of defectors would have included Wachtell partner Nathaniel Cullerton, but his hiring was scrapped after he was filmed in a viral TikTok video in an apparent romantic embrace with a colleague last week, the people said. Cullerton had been placed on a leave of absence from Wachtell pending further investigation, some of the people added.”]
In a series of X posts titled “Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition,” James Percival, general counsel to the Department of Homeland Security, criticized four federal district judges who ruled against the Trump administration. Philip Pro, a retired Nevada federal judge, called Percival’s posts “terribly disappointing”—as well as “irresponsible,” coming from a high-level government lawyer.
If you follow professional cycling, IP litigation, or both, you might be interested in Michael Shapiro’s piece for Bloomberg Law, A Cycling Icon Took on a Prolific Lawyer—The Dude Got Personal (referring to Floyd Landis and IP litigator Isaac Rabicoff, respectively).
Congratulations to Jeff Wall of Gibson Dunn and Rick Pepperman of Sullivan & Cromwell, recognized as Litigators of the Week by Ross Todd of Am Law Litigation Daily. They scored a nice win for their client Boeing in a securities litigation, which the Fourth Circuit held can’t proceed as a class action.
In memoriam: R. James Woolsey—a graduate of Yale Law and former partner at Shea & Gardner (now part of Goodwin), but most well-known for his (rocky) tenure as director of central intelligence in the Clinton administration—passed away at 84. May he rest in peace.
Judge of the Week: Judge Arun Subramanian.
If you’ll allow me to invoke Judge Judy, don’t pee on Judge Arun Subramanian’s leg and tell him it’s raining. A former law clerk to the late Justice Ginsburg and former partner at the litigation powerhouse Susman Godfrey (discussed below under Law Firm of the Week), Judge Subramanian isn’t someone you can pull a fast one on.
Shortly after The New York Times reported on security concerns related to the Air Force One jet that Qatar gifted to Donald Trump, the Trump administration issued subpoenas to five Times journalists, seeking to find out the identities of the reporters’ sources. Condemning the subpoenas as “a brazen effort to intimidate the press,” The Times, represented by Debevoise & Plimpton, filed a motion to quash the subpoenas.
Last Thursday, Judge Subramanian (S.D.N.Y.) held a hearing on the motion to quash—and it wasn’t fun for the government. As Erik Uebelacker of Courthouse News tweeted, Judge Subramanian “is absolutely cooking the DOJ right now for their subpoenas of NYT reporters,” stating that “under normal circumstances, he’d start asking about sanctions for this.” Or as reported by The Times (gift link):
The hearing had just started and Judge Arun Subramanian was no longer allowing Manhattan federal prosecutors to finish their sentences.
Instead, he pressed a top prosecutor, Sean Buckley, for an explanation: Why had the U.S. attorney’s office issued subpoenas to New York Times reporters—typically the final step in a leak investigation—just two days after the publication of an article about the security concerns of the president’s plane?
“Doesn’t that turn the law and the regulations on their head?” Judge Subramanian asked.
Alas, the administration lawyers didn’t come up with great answers for why they so quickly moved to issue subpoenas to journalists—a highly disfavored method for investigating leaks, given its potential to chill protected First Amendment activity.
And the longer the hearing went on, the worse it got. Under grilling from Judge Subramanian, the assistant U.S. attorneys acknowledged multiple “errors” in the investigation, including a second round of subpoenas that should never have gone out (because they inadvertently sought the phone records not of Times reporters, but of the mother of one reporter and the spouses of two others). For more about the hearing—and how painful it was for the poor AUSAs who had to cover it—see Courthouse News, Law Dork, or Above the Law.
By the end of the hearing, the prosecutors agreed to withdraw the subpoenas. That was the right call; if the subpoenas hadn’t been withdrawn, they were going to get quashed. After the hearing was over, the DOJ issued a statement criticizing Judge Subramanian, complaining that his “conduct overrides clear longstanding principles and common sense,” and declaring that the leak investigation “remains ongoing.”
The investigation might be “ongoing,” but you know what else is “ongoing”? Judge Subramanian’s oversight. Later on Thursday, he issued an order declaring that he will retain jurisdiction over “any related matters in this investigation”—and if the government wants to reissue the subpoenas, it must “come to the Court in advance of issuance.” So if the Trump administration wants to return to The Times while investigating this particular set of alleged leaks, it will have to get past Judge Subramanian first—which strikes me as no easy feat.
In other news about judges and the judiciary:
Speaking at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, Justice Elena Kagan rejected the view that the Supreme Court is “kind of a puppet for the current administration,” calling that accusation “a bad rap” (as reported by Abbie VanSickle of The New York Times (gift link), who attended the conference).
Speaking of Justice Kagan, Amy Howe wrote an interesting piece for SCOTUSblog, “Is Elena Kagan the stare decisis justice?” According to Howe, over the past decade, “Kagan has been perhaps the staunchest defender of precedent on the Court.”
Speaking of SCOTUS justices, Chief Justice John Roberts is selling his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The seven-bedroom, five-bathroom residence hit the market on June 26, asking $3.2 million, and went into contract four days later.
Turning to the state courts, Justice Karen Valihura retired from the Delaware Supreme Court as of July 25, as reported by Bloomberg Law (via How Appealing).
In nominations news:
The Senate confirmed two circuit-court nominees: former Ohio solicitor general Benjamin Flowers, confirmed to the Sixth Circuit by a vote of 49-46, and Judge Daniel Traynor (D.N.D.), confirmed to the Eighth Circuit by a vote of 48-47. (Ben Flowers clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia in October Term 2014, and 21 clerks from that Term signed a letter supporting his nomination—including clerks to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.)
The Senate also confirmed three trial-court picks: assistant U.S. attorney Michael Martin (E.D. Mich.), Faegre Drinker partner Antonio Pozos (E.D. Pa.), and associate White House counsel Kara Westercamp (C.I.T.).
Judge Bobby Shepherd (8th Cir.) announced that he’ll take senior status upon confirmation of his successor. After Donald Trump appoints that successor, Trump appointees will make up a majority of that court (six out of 11 judges), and Republican appointees will (still) outnumber Democratic ones, 10-1.
Who might Judge Shepherd’s successor be? Per Mike Fragoso of National Review, possibilities include Justices Nicholas Bronni and Cody Hiland of the Arkansas Supreme Court, as well as Judge Lee Rudofsky (E.D. Ark.). I might give the edge to Judge Rudofsky, whose elevation would free up a district-court seat for Trump to fill—assuming Trump and Senate Republicans can move fast enough.
In memoriam:
Judge John Steele (M.D. Fla.)—who served on the federal bench for more than three decades, as a magistrate and then district judge—passed away at 77. As noted by Sarah Isgur on Advisory Opinions, Judge Steele’s death came shortly after he issued a ruling that ordered the release from ICE custody of a Cuban national convicted of hijacking an aircraft. (Steele received extensive criticism from Republicans for that decision—but there’s no indication, at least as of now, that his passing was connected to the controversy.)
Justice Ruby Sondock, the first woman to serve on the Texas Supreme Court, passed away at 100. According to Professor Nancy Rapoport, Justice Sondock was “[a] force of nature and a legal legend—and an inspiration.”
May they rest in peace.
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