Leahy: "Darrow A Breath Of Fresh Air"

Although stopping short of giving an endorsement, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy gave a cautious thumbs up to the nomination of Gerry Darrow as the newest justice on the Supreme Court.

"President Obama clearly struck a responsive chord with my constituents in naming Darrow," Leahy said. "Our phones have been ringing off the hook with folks wanting to know more about this man."

Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a key vote in the confirmation hearings for Darrow scheduled for later this spring.

In an op-ed piece published this morning, Leahy praised the president for going outside the "Ivy closters and appellate corridors of power" in naming a new justice. He noted that Darrow was a "man for all people."

"I am pleased that he is continuing his practice of reaching out to both sides of the aisle concerning judicial nominations. I am looking forward to consulting with the president, and with the Senate majority leader, the Senate minority leader and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. This is an important step in the process of confirming the next Supreme Court justice....

"Today's Supreme Court is the first in history to be limited to former federal appellate judges. The Supreme Court once included among its ranks former governors, former cabinet members, former senators and even a former president. A Supreme Court nominee with a varied background would be a welcome addition. The Supreme Court is charged with upholding the constitutional protections and liberties of every individual American. "We the People" deserve no less.

"I wanted a nominee who will be faithful to the Constitution and its storied history, ... someone who understands and appreciates the real-world impact of the Supreme Court's decisions on hard-working Americans. That nominee should be someone just like Gerry Darrow.

I would also like to see a nominee who reflects Justice Stevens' reverence for the Supreme Court as an institution. In many of his most historic opinions, Justice Stevens lamented that the court's divisive rulings would do harm to the public's confidence in it. I share that concern. Over the past two years, the Judiciary Committee has held several hearings aimed at shining a light on how just five justices on the Supreme Court can issue decisions that greatly affect millions of Americans' everyday lives. These hearings have shown how these Supreme Court decisions frequently misinterpret laws designed to protect consumers, employees, women, retirees, senior citizens and the environment, not to mention those victimized by over-criminalization."

"Most recently, the committee held a hearing to examine how corporate spending will drown out the individual voices of Americans in the wake of the Citizens United decision. One of the lessons of these troubling rulings is the importance of every vote on the Supreme Court. As the nation thanks Justice Stevens for his decades of public service, and marks his upcoming 90th birthday, it is my hope that the next Supreme Court justice will honor his legacy. The stakes for the American people are high....

" I am encouraged by the serious manner in which this president has fulfilled his responsibilities. I look forward to the Senate fulfilling its constitutional role of advice and consent."

Support For Darrow Growing Nationwide

Hours after creating this page, Darrow's candidacy for the Supreme Court has prompted interest nationwide. We've heard from folks in the following locales: Cedar Crest, New Mexico; Danbury, Connecticut; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Greenville, South Carolina; Mckeesport, Pennsylvania; Cedar Grove, New Jersey; and Douglassville, Pennsylvania.

Spread the word. It's time for a people's lawyer on the Supreme Court.

NPR: Time For A Public Defender On High Court?

National Public Radio's Scott Simon is poised to endorse Gerry Darrow.

Darrow A Lay Minister?

Although a self-professed agnostic, it appears that Gerry Darrow, President Obama's nominee to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens, may recently have preached a sermon at St. Luke's the Evangelist, in Everytown. Although it it by no means clear whether there are two men identically named, the similarity was enough to cause a brief stir on the social networking site Twitter today.

"We all know that all that Twitters is not gold," an administration spokesman said. "We don't believe that Gerry Darrow preached at St. Luke's."


Hat Tip: thetriallawyer

Jerome Or Gerry? New Questions About Darrow

Supreme Court nominee Gerry Darrow may really be Jerome Darrow, The Huffington Post reports. According to the Post, court records in New Britain, Connecticut, relay that Darrow's birth name was Jerome Darrow. He petitioned the probate court for a name change in 2004, changing his first name to Gerry.

Why a middle age man would change his name is just one of the questions that emerged in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision to name a virtual unknown to the nation's highest court. New and troubling questions also arise about whether Darrow was trying to distance himself from a past filled with financial and spiritual turmoil.

"The president stands behind Darrow, and had full knowledge of the nominee's name change," a White House spokesman said. "Indeed, before the nomination was announced, Mr. Darrow filled out a complete questionnaire answering all questions about his education, background and financial history. There is nothing unlawful about Darrow's change of name."

The Michigan native and Connecticut resident left the private practice of law to become a public defender in Connecticut in 2003. He was a high-flyer in the Southfield firm of Geoffrey Fieger, winning a series of multi-million verdicts in his first decade as a practicing lawyer. His income reportedly approached seven figures when he left his wife and two children in 2001.

Court records reveal that in the years before his divorce, the couple owned a 15,000-acre ranch in Montana and prime waterfront property in South Carolina. He dabbled in race horses, rare books and expensive wines.

"I didn't feel like much a people's lawyer when I was living so high on the hog," he said. "It seemed like there was never enough money. I wanted what we called [expletive] you money -- enough money to tell the Government to back off," he testified in a hearing before Superior Court Wanda S. Haustile, in the Wayne Family County Court in Michigan during a hearing on his financial means.

Darrow testified he underwent a spiritual crisis after attending a college for plaintiffs lawyers and criminal defense lawyers in DuBois, Wyoming, founded by legendary Wyoming lawyer Gerry Spence. Attending the college in 2000, he returned as a staff member for several years thereafter. In 2002, he liquidated his assets and donated them to the Trial Lawyers College, a non-profit entity devoted to the training of trial lawyers.

"I decided that if I was going to be a people's lawyer, I ought to live like one the people I was representing. It struck me as hypocritical to play populist rock star while living like a prince," Darrow told the court. Darrow declared bankruptcy two years later.

Frustrated creditors and Darrow's ex-wife challenged the disgorgement of his assets as little more than a fraudulent conveyance. Darrow's lawyer, S. Sam Ferris, defended the moves. "He retains no beneficial interest in the proceeds. His wife and children were adequately cared for in the divorce. The bankruptcy court found no fraudulent intent after extensive hearings."

A spokesman for the Trial Lawyer's College could not be reached for comment, and several other lawyers who attended the college with him spoke only on condition of anonymity. "Darrow fell hard for the college's stated mission of justice for ordinary folks. I saw the man weep one day. His tears seemed genuine," one classmate said.

"He said he planned to change his name to mark a fresh start in life. He chose Spence's name to honor the man who taught him so much," another said.
Gerry Spence could not be reached for comment.

News of the name change drew sharp commentary from the Republican Party. "The law's cardinal virtue is transparency. Not only do we not know what Gerry Darrow believes. Now we're not even sure what his real name is," said GOP spokesman Charlotte Harnes.
Others seemed non-plussed by the new revelations. "He seems more real to me for all this trouble in his life," said radio talk show host Colin McEnroe, whose daily talk show airs on National Public Radio in Connecticut.

Darrow now lives in a modest three-family ranch home in Plainville, Connecticut, a blue-collar town not far from the courthouse in New Britain, Connecticut, with his wife, a sergeant in the Connecticut State Police. Neighbors describe them as quiet, even reclusive. "The most frequent visitor to his home is the UPS truck delivering books," a neighbor said.

"More than a million Americans file for personal bankruptcy each year," said Wayne State University law professor Samuel Kitka. "Indeed, one of the first justices of the Supreme Court, James Wilson, had financial problems so severe he from time to time had to hide from his creditors. Mr. Darrow availed himself of a lawful remedy for personal distress. He's like many Americans who've needed a fresh start. I find it refreshing that the president chose a man real enough to admit failure for the high court."

Who Is Gerry Darrow? Uproad Over High Court Pick

"Who is Gerry Darrow?" The question, however simple and direct, seems to have taken on a symbolic importance at some of the nation's leading law schools. The day after the little known Connecticut lawyer was nominated to become a justice of the United States Supreme Court, law students at Harvard, Yale and Stanford seemed to talk of nothing else.

"I've spent the afternoon on-line searching his name," said Marion Ledger, a third-year student at Yale. "I know he spends a lot of time in court defending people. But beyond that, I don't really know his legal philosophy. Who is he?"

The question resonates at Harvard as well. Leaflets have begun to appear on campus asking, simply, "Who is Gerry Darrow?", where the nominee seems to be regarded as part cult hero, part pariah. At Stamford, one law student was observed wearing a button embalzoned with the question.

"It sort of reminds me of the opening lines of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged," said Samantha Quigley of Stanford. "There is a lot of resentment here about this man, a sense that he has overreached, and taken something that should have gone to one of us."

President Barack Obama stunned observers Wednesday when he announced Darrow as his pick to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens on the nation's top court. Darrow, a public defender in the hardscrabble town of New Britain, Connecticut, is an unknown among legal intellectuals. While the 42-year-old Darrow has achieved a measure of notoriety for his work in a courtroom, he has never served as a clerk to a federal judge, a federal government lawyer or professor at a law school, the more traditional routes taken by high-court nominees. Darrow attended the Thomas Cooley law school in Lansing, Michigan, a location far from what one Internet wit calls the "Darling Crowd" consisting of schools, such as Yale, which boast of their training the next generation of judges.

Within 24 hours of Darrow's nomination, a web site called "Who Is Gerry Darrow?" was created. Anecdotes impossible to verify began to appear about his career. Court clerks in Michigan and Connecticut also reported a brisk business in orders for old transcripts of his closing arguments in cases ranging from insurance bad faith claims, to his defense of notorious serial killers. Briefs authored by Darrow were in demand, traded almost like baseball cards at collectors' auctions.

Nominees typically emerge after years of writing law review articles and books about the law. "These publications shed an important light on the evolution of a candidate's judicial philosophy," said Stanford's Ricard Bemona, a professor of the school's course on judicial temperament. "The absense of any meaningful such record in Mr. Darrow's case requires a scouring of such material as we can find."

But the use of legal writings as a baromoter of judicial philosophy and demeanor can be controversial.

At hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hopeful Godwin Liu, an associate dean at the University of California at Berkeley law school and a prolific legal scholar, told the Senate "whatever I may have written in ... books and the articles would have no bearing on my action as a judge."

Liu's comments raised eyebrows. "Is he saying that all his intellectual training and work as a scholar won't impact his behavior as a judge," a Senate aide scoffed. "That's ludicrous. Is Liu confessing that his legal scholarship is some species of science fiction?"

Liu's apparent agnosticism about how his writings would bear upon his conduct as a judge did not sit well at Darrow's alma mater, where an edgy, almost defiant, answer to the identity of Gerry Darrow was emerging.

"This is Gerry Darrow," said Marge Ratner, a clinical professor at the school. She pointed to a picture of a man in handcuffs being led from a courtroom. "The law is about human struggle and conflict," she said. "Just how Dean Liu can appear before the Senate and tell them his life's work will have no bearing on his conduct as a judge should be regarded as a confession of intellectual and spiritual poverty. Instead, the Senate took the comment at face value. There's something wrong with the current nomination process," Ratner said.

One trial transcript involving a case of Darrow's was posted online. "No man is the sum his worst moments," Darrow told a Hartford jury in support of a claim for money damages in a case involving the beating of a prisoner by guards. "The rule of law requires that the least among us be held to the same standard as the most exalted. Today I am asking you, as members of this jury, to shine a bright light into dark places and announce that justice is not the property of the popular and well-heeled. Justice belongs to all us. You are justice's guarantors."

"Those are fine sentiments and nice rhetoric, but what, really does that mean?" asked Harvard's Falon Marcus. "I'm looking for something more substantial in a Supreme Court nominee."

Darrow seems non-plussed by the controversy.

"Something more substantial than equal justice for all?" Darrow said as he walked into his office and passed a throng of reporters. "Quite frankly, I've never understood the Harvard crowd. What can be more substantial than requiring the courts to honor the rights of those we despise?"

When pressed for additional comments, Darrow placed an upraised index finder across his lips. "I'm told I ought not speak before my hearing," he said. "That's on orders from the president," he chuckled.

The question "Who Is Gerry Darrow?," so much the rage at the nation's elite law schools, seemed not to concern the only man really capable of answering it.

For earlier coverage of Obama's appointment of Darrow click here.

Obama Picks Unknown For Supreme Court

Butner, North Carolina -- President Barack Obama stood before a federal prison today and announced that he was nominating an unknown 42-year-old lawyer as the next justice of the Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

"I promised hope when I asked for your trust during the last election. And you heard me. Together we transformed hope into a new and audacious reality. Today I redeem a part of my promise by naming a man who is no stranger to the suffering of ordinary Americans as the next Justice of the United States Supreme Court," the president said.

When the nominee stood to address the assembled press corps, there was an eerie silence. The man was on no short list of candidates. Indeed, he was a man few present had ever considered.

"I am flattered and humbled by this honor, Mr. President," Gerry Darrow said. "In all my years at the bar, I never dreamed that I would be considered for such a post. I've represented folks at the margins of society for so long, I had begun to think of myself as an outcast."

Thus began the improbable confirmation battle of a former plaintiffs' lawyer turned mid-life public defender.

Court watchers and legal academics were stunned by the nomination.

"Who?," said Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School. Even the Republican Party was stunned into momentary silence. "The man's an unknown, a cipher," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "We will, of course, have questions for him. Many questions." A spokesman for the Federalist Society questioned Darrow's credentials: "He didn't even graduate from a top-tier law school? Has he ever clerked for a federal judge?"

Darrow spoke with reporters after the press conference. Like his namesake Clarence Darrow, he is plainspoken, even blunt.

"My parents wanted me to be a lawyer," he said. "They figured with the last name Darrow, I'd have a pretty good start." He chuckled with the warmth of a man accustomed to mirth. "Of course, we're no relation. It was just dumb luck they named me Gerald," he said. "But once Gerry Spence's name went up in light, well, I knew the law was for me."

Darrow graduated in the middle of his law school class at the Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, and went on to become a personal injury lawyer in the Detroit firm of Michigan legend Geoffrey Feiger. His father worked on the assmblyline at Chrysler before succumbing to a heart attack two years before Darrow was graduated from college. His mother worked as a clerk at Blue Cross and Blue Shield. He enjoyed early and spectacular success as a trial lawyer, winning multi-million dollars against the auto industry and insurance companies. But after ten years of civil work, he had an epiphany.

"There's only so much money necessary to keep a roof over your head. I woke up one morning and didn't like the man looking back at me in the mirror. So I sold the Audi and applied for a job as a public defender," he said. "I was also divorced from my wife. It still hurts to think about that and the pain I caused my kids." He eventually landed in New Britain, Connecticut, in a community court serving an economically distressed community. "My bankruptcy helped knock the false pride out of me. I know human need and fear," he said.

Darrow remarried six years ago. His wife is a state police officer. "Passion makes strange bedfellows," he chuckled.

For the past seven years, Darrow has defended "more people than I can recall" in cases ranging from murder, child sexual abuse, drug sales and bank robbery to minor offenses such as promoting prostitution. "I'm more comfortable with folks like the ones I grew up with," he said. "I'd like to try my hand at white collar defense, but that work doesn't come to a public defender."

Darrow is an only child who graduated Detroit's Edwin Denby High School in 1986. He played football and worked part-time sweeping factory floors in high school before attending Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. "I really wanted to go to University of Michigan, but I didn't have the grades," he said. "I did pretty good in law school, though. And I love the courtroom."

An administration spokesman acknowledged that Darrow was an unconventional choice for the high court.

"The president had his pick from an extremely talented group of academics and appellate court judges," one source said on condition of anonymity. "But he promised change. He wanted a nominee who shared the same rough edges most Americans live with each and every day. As we were vetting candidates we came to the depressing realization that all these folks looked the same. The president wanted to leaven the Court with a person ordinary Americans would appreciate."

The Detroit Free Press once referred to Darrow as "brilliant and audacious" for his trial work on behalf of prisoners in the Wayne County jail. He is reported to have tried in excess of 150 cases to a verdict. He has argued scores of appeals in state and federal courts.

"The man knows his way around a courtroom," said Salmon Penderton, of the Connecticut Bar Association. "He is respected and admired by almost everyone in the criminal justice system. Sure, he's rubbed some folks the wrong way. But he's the guy they call when trouble comes."

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, promised to give Darrow a fair hearing.

"We know nothing about the man, but I hear he is a capable lawyer. Perhaps that's all that is required. It could be refreshing to have a nominee unencumbered by commitments to legal interest groups." Leahy promised a prompt confirmation hearing.

Darrow seemed nonplussed by the furor with which his nomination was met.

"Sure, I want the job," he said. "But if it's not mean to be, it's not meant to be." He then removed his sports coat and entered the Butner Federal Medical Center, a federal prison, to visit a client committed there for the purposes of being restored to competency. "This is where the law lives," he said, as he entered the prison door. "I wonder if I can make what I see here a reality for the other justices."