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Happy new year. We rang in 2026 while visiting California, where we had a great time with Zach’s brother and his family. I’ll leave it at that, sparing you the gory details of Harlan and Chase’s misadventures with their cousins (including the severing of a rag doll’s arm, which the suspects insist was accidental). For those of you who do enjoy the personal updates (and kid photos), I refer you to this LinkedIn post. (Yes, a LinkedIn post is the Lat-Shemtob family’s excuse for a 2025 holiday card; if you were wondering why you didn’t get a card from us this year, it’s because there wasn’t one.)

Do you have any resolutions or aspirations for the new year? I’m hoping to do more speaking—which is why I’m excited about serving as the keynote speaker at the 2026 CPG Legal Forum of the Consumer Brands Association next February. I’ve already heard from a number of Original Jurisdiction readers who will be attending; if you’d like to escape the snow and join us, there’s still time to register.

Now, on to the news—of which there’s a decent amount, since this installment of Judicial Notice is a double edition that covers two weeks.

Lawyer of the Week: Martin Lederman.

On December 23, right before Christmas, the Trump administration suffered a rare loss on the Supreme Court’s interim docket. Specifically, in Trump v. Illinois, the Court put the kibosh on the federal government’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area. I discuss the decision, which Adam Liptak described in The New York Times (gift link) as “the Trump administration’s first major loss at the court in many months,” in greater detail below, as Ruling of the Week.

For now, I’d just like to highlight a lawyer who played a key role in the case: Professor Martin “Marty” Lederman of Georgetown Law. As Liptak explained, Lederman wrote an amicus brief in which he advanced an argument that no party to the case had made. Focusing intensely on the text and history of the law relied upon by the government—which allows the president to federalize the National Guard of any state if, among other things, “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States”—Lederman argued as follows:

[B]oth the President and the Solicitor General have mistakenly assumed that the term “the regular forces” in § 12406(3) refers to civilian law enforcement personnel (in this case, to actors in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers). That is incorrect. “[T]he regular forces” to which § 12406(3) refers are the regular, or “standing,” military personnel serving in the United States Armed Services…. Accordingly, a necessary precondition for the President’s order to deploy the National Guard to Illinois pursuant to § 12406(3) has not been met.

A week after Lederman filed his brief, the Court ordered the parties to submit additional briefing on the point he had raised. And in the end, a majority of the justices resolved the case on that basis, rejecting the Trump administration’s position after concluding “that the term ‘regular forces’ in §12406(3) likely refers to the regular forces of the United States military… [and so] the Government has not carried its burden to show that §12406(3) permits the President to federalize the Guard.”

The conventional wisdom about amicus briefs in the Supreme Court is that they tend to be pretty irrelevant—and that’s true of most amicus briefs, which focus on some pet theory or cause of the filer of the brief. Lederman’s brief, in contrast, made a textualist argument that shrewdly spoke to the Court’s conservative majority—even though Lederman, who served in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Obama administration, is not a conservative. So kudos to him for finding a way to persuade folks on the other side of the aisle, during a polarized time when that’s increasingly difficult to do.

Other lawyers in the news:

• Last Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee released 255 pages of transcripts from the closed-door testimony of Jack Smith, in which the former special counsel defended his indictments of Donald Trump and claimed that Trump privately acknowledged to others that he lost the 2020 election.

• In the alien-smuggling case against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, federal prosecutors in Nashville have been claiming over the past few months that senior DOJ officials weren’t involved in the decision to charge Abrego. But their statements might be belied by emails that were recently released by order of Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. (M.D. Tenn.), who wrote that the messages “may contradict [the government’s] prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences.”

• Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan and her colleagues at Kaplan Martin—including Brandon Trice, Maximilian Crema, Michael Quinn, and Avita Anand—worked tirelessly over Christmas Eve to fight the Trump administration’s attempt to detain and deport Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Ahmed and CCDH, which works to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation, of leading “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” Kaplan argued that Ahmed was being targeted for his protected speech, in violation of the First Amendment—and Judge Vernon Broderick (S.D.N.Y.) agreed, issuing a TRO after midnight on Christmas Day that blocked the government from arresting or detaining Ahmed.

• Robbie Kaplan isn’t the only lawyer fighting the administration’s efforts to deport individuals based on their speech. Check out this Times profile of Mahsa Khanbabai, who successfully represented Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts graduate student who was targeted for deportation after co-authoring a pro-Palestinian piece for a student newspaper.

• Along similar lines, Judge Amir Ali (D.D.C.) temporarily blocked the administration’s attempt to pull the security clearance of national-security attorney Mark Zaid, concluding that the case “involve[d] the government’s retribution against a lawyer because he represented whistleblowers and other clients who complained about the government.”

• Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom of California, warning Newsom that if a proposed billionaire tax becomes law, “[i]t will trigger an exodus of capital and innovation from California”—including departures by several (unnamed) clients of Spiro, a go-to lawyer for celebrities and billionaires like Elon Musk. (Newsom actually opposes the tax—but it’s being proposed as a ballot initiative, and if it passes as such, he can’t veto it.)

• At the end of this month, Rachel Brand will step down as chief legal officer of Walmart—and in a recent fireside chat with Mayer Brown partner Rajesh De, she offered career advice for lawyers who aspire to the types of leadership roles she’s held over the years, in both government and the private sector. (See also my 2022 interview with Brand, in which she described her path to becoming the #1 lawyer at the #1 company of the Fortune 500.)

In memoriam:

• Joseph Hartzler, who successfully prosecuted Timothy McVeigh for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, passed away at 75, from pneumonia.

• Former congressman Dick Zimmer (R-N.J.)—most well-known for sponsoring Megan’s Law, the federal statute requiring convicted sex offenders to register with law enforcement, but also a Yale Law and Cravath alum—passed away at 81, from a blood disorder.

• Krikor Kouyoumdjian, a civil-rights attorney in Los Angeles, passed away at 33—allegedly shot by his brother, during an argument over Christmas weekend.

May they rest in peace.

Judge of the Week: Judge Sarah Merriam.

In June 2024, I wrote about a complaint of judicial misconduct filed against Judge Sarah Merriam (2d Cir.). A former law clerk accused Judge Merriam of engaging in “abusive and harassing conduct” directed at chambers staff, including berating clerks for typos and other minor errors. But after an investigation, Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston dismissed the complaint, finding that “the Judge is committed to creating a better workplace environment for chambers staff” and that “current clerks’ experiences have generally improved since these concerns were brought to the Judge’s attention.” (Chief Judge Livingston’s order did not name the judge, but I independently confirmed that it was Judge Merriam.)

Alas, it’s possible that Judge Merriam might have regressed. As reported by Carrie Johnson of NPR (via Howard Bashman of How Appealing), the Legal Accountability Project (LAP) filed a new complaint in December against Judge Merriam—the second in four years. (LAP is a nonprofit organization that advocates for law clerks; to learn more about its work, listen to my podcast interview with its president and founder, Aliza Shatzman.)

LAP’s complaint states that it is based on conversations with multiple former Merriam clerks, including some from 2024 and 2025, who fear retaliation if they come forward themselves. One of LAP’s sources is a clerk who resigned in 2025, after only a month on the job. Summarizing the allegations of the complaint, Shatzman told NPR that Judge Merriam “is a bully, in all the ways one might bully their employees: yelling, berating clerks, sending all-caps unhinged emails.” (NPR reached out to the Second Circuit, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and Judge Merriam herself, but received no comments.)

As someone who occasionally loses my cool, I understand the challenges of anger management—but unlike Judge Merriam, I don’t have any full-time, taxpayer-funded employees. If you’re a federal judge with the privilege of having multiple, incredibly talented clerks in your employ, you need to treat them with respect. If nothing else, it’s in your own self-interest: in my anecdotal observation, judges who treat their clerks well tend to get better clerks. (Yes, there are exceptions, but fewer than there used to be: in 2026, there are plenty of judges who are great to work for and, say, able to feed their clerks into SCOTUS clerkships, if that’s the clerk’s goal.)

In other news about judges and the judiciary:

• Speaking of judges who have had issues with their clerks, Judge Aileen Cannon (S.D. Fla.) is back in the headlines. Former CIA director John Brennan filed a request with Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga (S.D. Fla.), asking her not to allow the government to steer an investigation in which he’s a target to Judge Cannon—which, according to Brennan, the government is trying to do by convening a special grand jury in Fort Pierce, where Judge Cannon is the only judge. For more about Judge Cannon, check out this fascinating profile of her for The Atlantic (gift link), by Marilyn Thompson—who (accurately) describes Judge Cannon as “more consequential to politics than any other district judge in recent memory.”

• Chief Justice John Roberts issued his year-end report on the federal judiciary—and, to be honest, it’s less exciting than recent ones, which focused on timely topics like AI and judicial independence. For a nice, concise account, read Amy Howe’s post for SCOTUSblog.

• Judge Hannah Dugan resigned, after she was convicted on a federal obstruction charge for helping an undocumented immigrant evade ICE agents. In a letter to Governor Tony Evers (D-Wis.), she wrote that although she is continuing to fight the federal criminal case against her, in proceedings that “present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary,” her constituents “deserve to start the year with a judge on the bench in Milwaukee County Branch 31.”

• Judge Pauline Newman (Fed. Cir.) lost her bid for rehearing en banc by the D.C. Circuit, in her long-running case challenging her (seemingly endless) suspension from the bench—notwithstanding that she holds a presidential commission and has never been impeached.

Turning to federal judicial nominations, Trump ended the first year of his second term with 26 appointments to the Article III bench, more than the 17 who were confirmed in 2017. But as noted by Bloomberg Law, only six of last year’s 26 appointments were to the more influential circuit courts, compared to 12 in 2017. And conservative lawyers and lawmakers are concerned that the administration isn’t putting up more nominees, with Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) declaring at a December hearing that he’d “like to process even more judicial nominations, but I’m waiting on the President to get those nominations up here.”

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