I'm Elizabeth Slattery and welcome to Scotus 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week, I'm sharing an interview with Judge Patricia Millett from the D.C. Circuit. We talked about her record-breaking career in the S.G.'s office, how she got into Taekwondo, and what it was like to watch her former colleague, Brett Kavanaugh, go through a brutal confirmation hearing at the Supreme Court. I'll be back next week with regular programming, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this special episode. Patricia Millett is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Welcome to SCOTUS 101, Judge Millett.

Thank you for having me.

So you spent 11 years in the Office of Solicitor General,

and combined with your time in private practice,

you argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court.

So first, can you tell me about your very first Supreme Court argument?

So it was a case called Blessing versus Free Stone, and it involved whether there were

private rights of actions to enforce certain provisions of welfare statutes.

It was payments to women with children,

and there was a requirement that they were supposed to cooperate

with government efforts to enforce child support.

That was sort of a long statement of the issue.

It was memorable in many ways.

Of course, it was the first argument, and it had extraordinary stress associated with that

and questioning, you know, am I really up to this? But also, just my luck after this case was granted, Congress passed

the massive reform statute. The statute itself changed significantly, so we were kind of

briefing two separate statutory schemes at the same time. So it was a lot. And then the people,

the state folks that were challenging, the right to bring the action, decided to add a number

of constitutional issues into their brief. So it had, it was, it was quite a buffet of issues

for a first timer up in the Supreme Court.

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