Federal district court judges call each other up when they're "puzzled by legal questions" and they've "been on the receiving end of the game-show-like call for help."

The NYT reports based on interviews with "a dozen judges in Manhattan�s Federal District Court."

On appeals courts, where judges typically rule in groups, collaboration is the rule. But trial judges are seen as solitary actors, the captains of their courtrooms, answerable only to a higher court. That is what makes a trial judge calling another for advice seem unusual to outsiders....

Judge Ronnie Abrams, a former prosecutor appointed to the bench in 2012, said she had been �at both ends� of such calls. As a judge, she said, �you can�t talk about your job to too many people, and so it�s nice to use the kind of experience and perspective of your colleagues when appropriate.�

I couldn't find anything in the article about what was "game-show-like," but I think we're just supposed to remember that on the old show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," contestants were allowed 3 "lifelines," one of which was "phone a friend." So... calling a colleague for help with a question you find hard could thus be "game-show-like."

"The Destruction of the Wisconsin Supreme Court," by Lincoln Caplan.

In The New Yorker. I thought you should know.

When addressing a case like the John Doe inquiry, with the election of a controversial governor and now an undeclared Presidential candidate at its core, the Wisconsin Supreme Court should be seen as above the fray, beyond price, and wholly independent. Instead, contrary to the ideal that John Roberts described in [Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar], all of the Wisconsin justices look a lot like politicians, in particular the conservatives, who came to the bench with the support of powerful and aggressive political groups. Those justices� integrity is compromised, as plainly as if they had personally solicited every dollar that helped elect them � and that helped drag the standing of their court so low.

All judges look like politicians, especially the conservatives. And all New Yorker writers who write about judges look like politicians, especially when they write about conservatives.

ADDED: Amusingly, The New Yorker points me to a March 5, 2012 article titled: "The Storm/Did a governor�s anti-union crusade backfire?" The answer, it turned out, was: no.

"The Court�s twistifications have not come to an end; indeed, they are just beginning.... The First Amendment is not abridged for the benefit of the Brotherhood of the Robe."

Writes Justice Scalia, dissenting from the Supreme Courts decision today in Williams-Yulle v. The Florida Bar (PDF), which upheld the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct prohibition on the personal solicitation of campaign contributions by judicial candidates.

It's notable that the Court applies strict scrutiny. (The Florida Bar had argued that the Court should use a lower level of scrutiny that would only require the limit on speech to be �closely drawn� to match a �sufficiently important interest." That test, the Court said, applies to freedom of political association claims, not to free speech claims like the one presented here.)

But Justice Scalia (who was joined by Justice Thomas) objected to the way the Court applied strict scrutiny:
Click for more �

"What? You think because you sit up there in that little black robe hiding behind the ignorance of the masses like a little b*tch..."

"... that ANYBODY gives a d*amn about you or what you have to say? Well, just in case you haven�t noticed�I couldn�t give two f*cks about you or what you have to say. F*ck you, old man. You�re a joke. Your court�s a joke. You take it up the a*s; and you suck nuts. Lol."

From a motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, "Notice To F*ck This Court And Everything That It Stands For."

"One virtue of appointing federal appellate judges to the Court is that these highly judicialized folk are already masters at applying Supreme Court doctrine."

"After all, this is what circuit-court judges do every day: they study and apply what the Supreme Court has said about one legal issue or another. One problem, however, is that Supreme Court precedent can be dead wrong. Sometimes, in fact, it is baloney. And lower-court judges, who daily slice and eat this doctrinal baloney, may be ill-equipped to see it for what it is. Specifically, they may be inclined to think that judges are more right than they really are, and other branches of government, more wrong. A lower court�s job is to follow the Supreme Court�s precedents, whether right or wrong. But the Supreme Court�s job, in certain situations, is to correct its past mistakes�to overrule or depart from erroneous precedents. (Brown famously and gloriously abandoned Plessy v. Ferguson�s malodorous 'separate but equal' doctrine.) Someone who has not spent his or her entire life reading Supreme Court cases � who has instead spent time thinking directly about the Constitution and also spent time in a nonjudicial branch of government with its own distinct constitutional perspectives and traditions � may be particularly good at knowing judicial baloney when he or she sees it."

Writes lawprof Akhil Reed Amar in "Clones on the Court/A Supreme Court that once included former senators and governors is populated today by judges with identical r�sum�s. Here's why that's a mistake."