Justice Consuelo Marie Callahan, Circuit Judge, United States Courts of Appeal [85:48-90:51]

move on in the judiciary you have to have the requisite intellect to do it you really have to have the work ethic and you're not going to the judicial you know judges are generalists and you're always going to be undertaking new areas of the law you can't have practiced in every areas of the law that you're going to be making decisions in and so you truly have to have that flexible mind you have to have the willingness to roll up your sleeves I think you have to have the ability to write well I think that judges should really work on that trial judges do not have to do that as much but if they want to be an appellate judge clear written communication is really you know that's what that's our communication in that basis so you've got to you've got to learn to do that and and I think also just recognizing you have a lot of resources available to you and you need to learn how to exercise those those resources and surprisingly you've got to be a good decision maker to be a good judge and I'm constantly amazed that there are actually people in the judiciary that can't make up their mind now how this happened I will never know and why they it's true that we have difficult cases and that's different I'm not saying don't labor over the difficult cases but we get paid the big bucks as it were to pull the trigger at the end of the day it's not to split the baby it's to take all the law out there and make your best reason judgment on what the law says what the president says if there isn't an exact answer for it to you know how you use what president you have and you appropriately extend it in a way that you think that either your state Supreme Court or the US Supreme Supreme Court would do it based on the president you have available so you know I think you've just got to you've got to get comfortable with that and you do everything that you can to turnover every rock when you're doing it to look at everything to use all the resources that you have available but in the ultimate sense you have to make up your own mind and I would say make up your mind don't come out with decisions that don't answer the question that you were presented with thank you that was very nice I want to ask you we mentioned one thing about energy and the rolling up your sleeves and the work ethic and there's this rumor about you that you probably need very little sleep because you have boundless energy someone once said to me I think Connie only needs three hours of sleep at night could you speak to that well if you this is where my mother always likes to pipe in I came home from the hospital and I didn't even I only nap 20 minutes at a time then I just I'm not a person that needs a lot of sleep and I think I am blessed with high energy but um but I but certainly I do believe in sleep and I do I do sleep what what I need to do but but I think you know I think where you get your energy to to some extent is when you do things that you love and do things that you think that are important and you essentially match your skills with your passion and your you know your and your ability the risk in my view pretty much takes care of itself I don't feel like even though I've always worked hard probably in some ways the easiest part of my life has been my work I thought raising children was infinitely more difficult than doing work because in my work I could really control it people actually have to do what I say once I make up my mind you know it is because I say it is you know my children are just like everyone else's children they don't listen to me anymore than they listen to anyone else they have no you know I I can remember saying to to my son you know people are afraid of your mother your mother's actually lock people up for the rest of the rest of their lives and they don't talk back to me you don't listen to anything that I have to say you know you just nod your head and then go and do whatever you know you don't think I know whatever I'm talking about and so it you know I think that really and I and I always tell people yes judging is difficult and it has a huge impact on people and you you always take that very seriously and you put all the effort in to do it but the things that other people do are often very difficult and a lot of the challenges that we face in the rest of our lives sometimes are things that we have no control over things that we can't change and I think probably the biggest challenge is it's a lot harder for me to accept things that I can't change than some of the work that I have that that I have to do because that there's always there's an answer out there there's something that you can do you can get in there and do what you have to do but but sometimes when people things bad things happen to them people are sick there's there's nothing that you can do and helplessness is a lot more