José A. Cabranes, U.S. Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit, Portrait Dedication [73:08-76:01]

In the District of Connecticut, portraits are usually reserved for the time when a junior judge assumes senior status. When it became clear some years ago that I had no intention of taking senior status in the foreseeable future, my clerks took the matter into their own hands as it were. I am as always in their debt. A word on my law clerks. In the nature of things, the work in chambers with law clerks is intense and intimate. My collaboration with my clerks and their later progress in the legal profession has been a source of a measurable satisfaction. I am especially pleased that Mark Gottridge and Jesse Ferman have played leading roles in this conspiracy of clerks. As it happens, both have a special place in my affection. Mark Gottridge, as you've heard, was my very first law clerk. And he brought it to my first year on the bench, an energetic New York style by way of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, a style that matched the somewhat manic style of a New York Puerto Rican. Mark worked alongside a more deliberate fellow named Bob Shotney, who arrived a few months into the year and who helped keep Mark and me in line. We all tended to work with the spatch and we put in long hours. The local federal bar was reported to be unsettled by the introduction of case management pre-trial orders not to speak of court sessions running past 9 p.m. for which I continue to owe an apology to my friend and former court reporter Paul Collard, who's here today. I had not yet fully appreciated the kind of strain on which any court reporter necessarily works. Working a full day until 9 o'clock is a very long day for a court reporter. Let me assure you, he tolerated me and I'm very grateful for that. Three decades after I horrified the local bar, at least for a while, I'm finally ready to give Mark up and to reveal him as the original co-conspirator in my overbearing style. But as you know, there's a reason why I can forgive Mark anything, including the fear that may still be associated in some places by the name of Judge Cabranas. For it was he who contrived with great subtlety to have me meet Kate Stiff. She was then his fellow assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York and she had received an offer to teach at the L law school. As Mark put it, this intrepid crime fighter needed some advice on the challenges of living in New Haven. Well, I did give Kate some advice on the subject of living in New Haven.