Justice Consuelo Marie Callahan, Circuit Judge, United States Courts of Appeal [75:45-80:45]

fortunate coming on being with experience colleagues and then obviously I I noticed although my presiding judge did not say this all my first panels that I sat on were with the with him and the two other most senior judges justices on the bench so I noticed that he was stacking it with with people that would really be carefully overseeing me so I think I had a little internship of my own that he never he never said was going on but I noticed that I I didn't get any I didn't get the less experienced judges on my panels until I got further along and so I had that going on and he my presiding judge which I was a little bit I was a little put off at the at the initial time he picked my staff for me he gave me two of the most experienced people on the court and I think that there was I think that there was a little paternalism going on at that particular time but in hindsight looking back he really picked the people I should have I would have picked had I know what I was looking for so it in the end of the day I couldn't be I couldn't have really been too upset so I had I had two lawyers that probably had worked in other chambers for other justices previously that were very experienced a pellet chambers attorneys and and very experienced judges and so that really was at my bedrock that if I was gonna go off and do anything too crazy I had plenty of people there to to stop me from doing it but but I think but like every other position that I believe when you go in you have to go in humbly and you have to go in and just take your time and you just do preparation like everything else and I approach that the same way I would always start with the briefs then meeting with my lawyers and find you know discussing it with my lawyers and then we would decide how we were going to approach things and then at the third district court it's very different from the ninth circuit because when you actually finally go into oral argument you have written the the three judge panel has a draft in place that at least two of the justices have agreed on sort of as a tentative decision of course that can be changed so we did a lot of work at the front end and we really had reached a tentative decision by the time we went into court and then then it went from there so we're very prepared going in I find myself still having the same level of preparation going into argument here but I don't I haven't discussed it with the other judges on the panel at all before we go into oral argument I don't know what they think about it and so it's I know what I think about the case but I don't know what my colleagues think about it and then we conference after oral argument and that's the first that I know what what their opinion is on the case so unlike the third it's not shared beforehand is that just the culture at the night it is the culture we do share what we call our bench memos and the bench memos are basically they summarize what the what the legal arguments are in the briefs what the law is and the bench memos are written by law clerks from the various chambers and depending on the chambers that you get them from the the bench memo may recommend a resolution that only reflects what the law clerk thinks of the particular case and will come from the chambers where the judge may not have even read it before he or she sends it to you on the other end I have a different philosophy nothing goes out of my chambers that I don't agree with and so if my law clerks are going somewhere that I think isn't is is not consistent with how I think the case should be resolved in a bench memo it my it it will be changed to what I think is the proper resolution of the case although if they disagree with me I certainly will give full coverage of the issues in the other because my responsibility in a bench memo is to tell the other chambers everything about the case all the legal issues and then ultimately make a recommendation but so it's just different from chambers to chambers but we don't actually with the judges discuss what the judge thinks about the case now there is a sometimes you know because unlike the third district court were on the state courts courts of appeal the parties have a right to argument they can waive it but they have a right to it on the ninth circuit they don't have a right to argument and we can submit cases based on the panel agreeing that argument isn't necessary and it can be decided without argument and so the only parties that get argument are those cases that we decide we want to hear argument on so there's sometimes when we've decided to submit a case we've obviously communicated and we've said we don't think this needs oral argument and we've each stated what our opinions are and so we kind