Judge Edith Jones served as chief judge of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals from 2006-2012. She was appointed as a federal judge by Ronald Reagan in 1985 and is a former White House Fellows Commissioner and former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. Last week, Judge Jones was on campus teaching a daily class to undergraduates on jurisprudence. On Tuesday, she participated in a talk with College President Larry Arnn on the topic “Lawyers, Judges, and the Rule of Law.” Compiled by Ramona Tausz.
You have been on campus teaching a daily class to undergraduates. What have you been teaching?
The students seem to be majoring in politics or economics, and they’re very well-prepared for class, which is gratifying. I think the course was titled something like, “Jurisprudence.” I’ve been a judge for nearly 30 years, and I’ve never taught before, so what I’m doing is hopefully teaching some of the basics about the role of judges and law in our American constitutional system. I’ll leave them, I hope, with some tools they can use as private citizens or as budding law students to think about important legal issues that society confronts.
What do you think of your first teaching experience?
I guess I’ll leave it to the student reviews as to whether they think I did a good job. It’s always a useful exercise to get ready for a course because you have to sort of put your thoughts in order and prioritize what you think are the important components of whatever subject matter you’re dealing with. It was very useful to prepare and the students were asking good questions and were intellectually-engaged, so as long as there’s mutual appreciation and they’ve benefited from the teaching, I would probably do it again.
Many students enjoyed your description of clerkship in Tuesday’s talk.
It’s really one of the greatest things that can happen to a young law graduate, but we get many, many applications. There are probably about 2,000 clerkship opportunities open in the federal courts each year and about40,000 students are graduating, so you have to be very at the top of your class to qualify for clerkship. As you can imagine, there is a gigantic underground communication about clerkships by former law clerks and some professors and so on, and so there’s a lot of scuttlebutt out there about which judges are the best ones to clerk for and which cities the best ones to be in and so on. I’m not privy to all that, but anyone who’s going to apply for a clerkship probably needs to explore all that.
What options are available for students who don’t get clerkships right out of law school?
Well, they’re like me! I didn’t get a clerkship. I wasn’t able to look around a lot for various reasons and, you know, you go and practice law and learn it in law practice. It worked out.
Is a clerkship ever more than a temporary position?
That is a very good question. Unfortunately, in my view, there are more and more judges who are hiring what they call permanent clerks. It’s a great job, because you are serving the judge and therefore the cause of justice permanently. You get all the benefits of federal employment. Not as high a salary, but the main benefit is reasonable working conditions. But still, there are a lot more student clerks, than there are permanent clerks. A lot of the permanent clerks work for older judges, who have less work to do. The judges don’t want to be bothered by having to train new people and hire new people every year.
At your talk, you mentioned that “despair is a sin” when looking toward the future of our country. How do you demonstrate optimism in your work and how might you encourage students to stay optimistic?
Well, for myself, I just am doing my judicial job as well as I can, pursuant to the principles that I’ve tried to teach the students today, which are strict regard for the rule of law and a conception of the proper role of the judiciary in our society. As for the students, I think it’s important for each student to make decisions and then pursue excellence in whatever course they choose. Then no matter what external forces may seem to buffet them at the end of the day, each one will be able to say, “I did the best I could.”
