Wow. We all heard about former 9th Circuit federal appellate judge, Alex Kozinski, who was a piece of work, but Stephen Reindhardt? Reinhardt was married to Ramona Ripston, former head of the ACLU-SoCal for many years. Both Reindhardt and Ripston died in 2018, about nine months apart, with Reinhardt pre-deceasing her. Reinhardt and Ripston were a true power couple in a land of power and power couples. I am shocked she would have put up with such behavior, but then, again, I never understood how Reinhardt heard cases involving the ACLU SoCal branch, or cases where the ACLU SoCal office submitted amicus briefs, without recusing himself.
My memory of once seeing Reinhardt up close was in the mid1990s. Even then, he was starting to fade intellectually, but was still arrogant in thinking he was the smartest guy in the room. When I had my famous confrontation (friendly, but firm) with Justice Scalia over the incoherence of Scalia's stance supporting "originalism" and its contradiction with Scalia's texturalism, it was in the Q&A after a highly publicized among lawyers debate Scalia and Reinhardt had on originalism. Reinhardt had clearly not prepared and did terribly against Scalia, which shocked me. Scalia, on the other hand, was prepared, and far more effective for his position. Seeing how badly Reinhardt did, I decided to stand up in that room of over 500 lawyers during the Q&A period, and threw my cross exam questions at Scalia--and exposed Scalia in less than 2 minutes on the topic. One may have thought Reinhardt would have been pleased to see someone push back against the lion of the conservative jurists, meaning Scalia. Nope. When I walked up to Reinhardt after the Q&A, he brusquely refused to talk with me. It was my part of my education of how players play, even those who largely agree with you. The irony, of course, was later in the evening, at the dinner (it was a weekend seminar), someone came over to me and said Scalia wanted to meet me. I did, and he was kind, fun, and friendly. Scalia was excited to learn I was a half Italian-half Jewish guy from New Jersey, saying how he and his family were in the Jewish section of Brooklyn, how important it was to his growth as a person, and becoming involved in the law, and how Jewish and Italian moms are essentially the same. He told a great old Jewish bubbe joke at this gathering, which was sponsored by Orange County Chabad, and he was very charming and friendly. What I learned from that experience was how much Scalia liked good and solid argument, and respected that type of argument. It is why I was not surprised when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would later say how much she and Scalia got along even as they had some knock down, drag out verbal fights. He was definitely acerbic, no doubt about it. But he respected and loved good arguments.
So, reading this article about Reindhardt being a lech, a sexist, and harasser, is a sad shock, as again I would never have thought Ramona Ripston would countenance such behavior. But Reinhardt was an arrogant asshole, intellectually a player, and therefore intellectually corrupt--and, on top of that, he stayed on the bench way too long, which is why I am supportive of term limits of 20 years for judges. Yes, count me in as angry with Justice Ginsburg for her not retiring in 2014, when there were some quiet, but respectful calls for her to do so.
