Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk serves as Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in the Amarillo division. He graduated from Abilene Christian University in 1999 and the University of Texas Law School in 2003. He is a 2017 Trump-appointee and is known for his role in the 2022 case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA in which he preliminarily suspended the FDA’s distribution of the abortion drug Mifepristone.
This week, he visited Hillsdale and gave a lecture titled “From Liberty to License: Libertine Inversions of Free Speech Jurisprudence.”
What have you enjoyed about your visit to Hillsdale?
I am impressed with the integration of the great books, great traditions, faith, and all the subject matter that gets seamlessly integrated here. It’s consistently producing students that are adaptable to almost any profession because they have a complete view of the classical curriculum. We’ve sent our kids through classical schools, and this is the end point of that process, so I’m encouraged that this model does work, and I’ve been impressed with students who are at the capstone of all that process.
What interactions have you had with Hillsdale graduates in your career?
At the University of Texas, my mentor and upperclassman, Aaron Streett, was Hillsdale Man of the Year when he graduated. He mentored me through law school. He helped make my decision to work at the same law firm. He helped me navigate my three years of law school, and I likely would not have enrolled in things like the Federalist Society, Christian Legal Society, the Texas Review of Law and Politics, but for a Hillsdale grad.
What advice do you have for Hillsdale students thinking of going into law?
Think of the juris doctor diploma as a key to multiple doors, whether it’s service in federal law enforcement, big law, government, politics. I did not attend law school intending to practice law. I come from a military family, my dad’s side is the Air Force, my mom’s side is the Army. I intended to use the JD to do some form of government service, military or otherwise, but I found at every interval of my career, at every fork in the road, the JD opened paths. I wouldn’t wish law school on everybody, because it can be very stressful. But it is a door opening device. Our culture is built around the rule of law for good and ill. Lawyers are necessary in so many parts of our mixed economy, and you can do so many professions. You can walk into so many career tracks.
Do you have a favorite job you’ve worked in?
Serving as an assistant United States attorney in the Department of Justice representing the United States. I was able to work on National Security Division cases in the aftermath of 9/11. So it felt relevant and impactful to work on terrorism cases when that was a primary focus of the department. To this day, it’s my favorite job.
How do you as a federal judge balance work and family life?
The job of a federal judge has a lot of security because of lifetime tenure, and you are able to control your docket in a way that is impossible in private practice, so it allows me to set my own deadlines, briefing schedules, orders so I can control my docket in a way I never could in private or nonprofit, or even government service. It’s my own discipline in keeping deadlines. But we have five kids, ages 16 down to eight, and it is a concerted and intentional decision to focus available bandwidth on them. I was discussing a case with a friend, and they asked what I did for recreation. I do family. I don’t spend four hours on the golf course alone in a golf cart. I spend four hours at a track meet. I spend three hours snowboarding with the kids in Colorado. You have to decide that that vocation is actually more important than profession, and where there’s available bandwidth, you fill it with family, because ultimately that’s the task that matters most. It’s a little bit like the metaphor of the rocks. So if you have a glass cylinder and you need to fill it with big, middle and small rocks, you start with the big and you kind of fill everything else. So family always has to be one of the biggest rocks. I’ll do my best to balance everything else, but where I have bandwidth, that’s reserved for family and church.