WASHINGTON (AP) — No girl has appeared extra typically earlier than the Supreme Courtroom than Lisa Blatt, who will make her fiftieth argument this month.
No lawyer, male or feminine, has performed it with fairly the identical mixture of humor, ardour and elegance. And her win-loss file isn’t unhealthy, both: 40-6, with two circumstances but to be determined.
She elicits laughs and the occasional sharp response from the justices, who appear to take pleasure in Blatt’s displays as a lot as they respect her authorized acumen.
When Blatt joked that Justice Samuel Alito was being her “enforcer” with a pleasant query in a case a few claimed retaliatory arrest that was argued final month, the justice mentioned, “I’m not making an attempt to be your enforcer by any means. … You don’t want one, by any means.”
The Supreme Courtroom’s information for attorneys who’re arguing earlier than the justices basically warns in opposition to making an attempt to emulate Blatt.
“Makes an attempt at humor normally fall flat. The identical is true of makes an attempt at familiarity,” the information advises. “Keep away from emotional oration and loud, impassioned pleas. A well-reasoned and logical presentation with out resort to histrionics is simpler for listeners to understand.”
She may be strikingly casual, in a single case referring to the very best court docket within the land as “you guys.” She is commonly blunt, as soon as telling Justice Elena Kagan that her query was factually and basically unsuitable. She has resorted to the private, in a single case the place she felt her Harvard-educated opponent was being condescending. “I didn’t go to a elaborate regulation college, however I’m very assured in my illustration of the case regulation,” the College of Texas graduate mentioned.
“Texas is a tremendous regulation college,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg mentioned, simply because the arguments had been ending and earlier than the court docket handed Blatt a unanimous win.
Blatt additionally may be hyperbolic, cautioning final yr {that a} resolution in opposition to her shopper, a Turkish financial institution, could be “borderline, you recognize, cataclysmic.” A ruling that acknowledged a big swath of Oklahoma as tribal land would have “earth-shattering” penalties, she mentioned in 2018. The justices risked inflicting “insanity, confusion, and chaos” in the event that they dominated for a highschool scholar who was suspended from the cheerleading squad over a vulgar social media submit.
Shoppers hold hiring her and the court docket retains agreeing to listen to her circumstances, mentioned Paul Clement, Blatt’s buddy and onetime boss on the Justice Division.
“She simply has this sort of inimitable fashion, and she or he’s very assured in her personal fashion and the justices find it irresistible,” mentioned Clement, who has argued greater than 100 instances on the Supreme Courtroom. Solely a dozen lively attorneys who’ve made as many as 50 arguments.
Blatt, 59, makes no apologies.
“Oral argument is like reality serum. Below the stress of their questioning, you possibly can’t change into somebody you aren’t,” she mentioned in an e-mail. “I do suppose I’m very direct however at backside, my fashion displays the truth that I wish to win and the Courtroom to step into the sneakers of the social gathering I’m representing.”
She heads the Supreme Courtroom and appellate apply on the Williams and Connolly regulation agency, the place her husband is also a accomplice. They’ve two kids in regulation college. Blatt has argued simply over half her excessive court docket circumstances in personal apply, the remainder as a Justice Division lawyer.
When she made her first look on the court docket in December 1996 on the age of 31, there have been two girls on the court docket, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ginsburg. Blatt had been a clerk for Ginsburg on the federal appeals court docket in Washington.
At this time, 4 of the 9 justices are girls, a file. The share of girls who argue earlier than them is decrease, although the quantity has jumped markedly this time period. Since October, simply over one-third of the arguments had been made by girls, in contrast with beneath one-quarter of arguments the yr earlier than.
Blatt is one in every of solely a handful of girls in personal apply who frequently argue on the Supreme Courtroom and she or he has known as out the dearth of variety. Final time period, two girls in her agency argued three circumstances between them and her onetime accomplice Charles McCloud is among the few Black males who’ve argued on the court docket lately. McCloud now works for the Justice Division.
She additionally courted controversy in 2018, when as a self-described “liberal Democrat and feminist,” Blatt publicly backed Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Courtroom. She known as him “your best option that liberals may moderately hope for” at a time when Republicans managed the Senate and the White Home. Blatt testified earlier than faculty professor Christine Blasey Ford got here ahead with the explosive allegation that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her whereas they had been in highschool. Kavanaugh has denied any misconduct.
Opponents of Kavanaugh’s affirmation complained that Blatt spoke up as a result of she typically represents rich shoppers on the Supreme Courtroom. In a tweet on the time, Brian Fallon, then with the progressive judicial reform group Demand Justice, wrote that Blatt places “company pursuits forward of progressive causes.”
Company shoppers are an vital a part of Blatt’s enterprise and embody Google, Atlantic Richfield Co., Financial institution of America and Starbucks. She is representing the espresso chain in what might be her fiftieth argument in a dispute with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board over efforts by employees to unionize at a retailer in Memphis, Tennessee.
On Monday, Blatt is representing James Snyder, the previous mayor of Portage, Indiana, who’s interesting his bribery conviction. Different shoppers embody Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer who gained a copyright combat involving an Andy Warhol picture of the singer Prince, and state and native authorities officers.
The case she argued final month that prompted the “enforcer” alternate with Alito concerned a metropolis council member within the San Antonio suburb of Citadel Hills, Texas, who contends she was arrested on a trumped-up cost as a result of she spoke up in opposition to the mayor and his allies.
Blatt, representing the mayor, mentioned it might be straightforward to get away with crimes if the court docket guidelines in opposition to the mayor.
“I imply, I actually would advise each felony to place a, you recognize, political bumper sticker on their automotive,” she mentioned, to laughter.
Mark Sherman, The Related Press
