You ready?

I was born ready.

Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. I'm David French with Sarah Isger and we've got a fantastic guest here today. I'm going to let Sarah introduce him.

I just wish you all were listening to the green room before we went on the air. I can't disclose what was said, but it would have been just worth the entire the entire hour.

But this is a guest. He's overdue. It's it's overdue to have him on the podcast.

We talked about him just a bit in our podcast with the Kiela Mar from Yale and Sarah introduce our esteemed guest, please.

He shy, David. That's why he hasn't been on the podcast. I was here about to find out joining us today is Judge Michael Ludig. You've heard plenty about him on this podcast and everywhere else for that matter.

But to run through a little bit of the bio, he, first of all, most importantly, I think was born in Texas. So we can sort of stop the bio there.

Now, went to Washington and Lee's W. Nell grad University of Virginia for his law degree. You must have been will get to this, but one of the first clerks for Justice Scalia in the first class of clerks for him.

But then you clerked a second time violating my multiple clerkships rule, though perhaps this was a little bit before that was particularly unvoge.

I learned this actually from Wikipedia. I knew you were a burger clerk after you clerked for Scalia, but you were the co-executor of burgers. One page will.

That is a clerk relationship there. Of course, you went on to the Department of Justice Office of Legal Council.

And then you were appointed to the fourth circuit, becoming infamous. And in fact, well, you left. You wanted a private, private law practice, general counsel. You've done several many things.

You're really back in the public eye now talking a lot about electoral count act. You advised vice president Pence in the run up to January six. We'll get to we'll get to various things. But my first question to you, Judge ludic.

Is that for the years that you were on the fourth circuit, you're the people who clerked for you. It was infamous that if you clerked for Judge ludic, it was the apotheosis of law school clerkships. And those people were called ludigators.

And this is actually a term for your clerks and your clerk family. I am not aware of any other judge that had a term for their clerks. Then now in the future, I'm curious where that came from. If you even know of how the ludicator nomenclature arrived.

Thank you, David. Thank you, Sarah. It's a pleasure to be on. I hope that that that mantle was not infamous.

I'm not supposed to famous. But regardless, it's not what I ever called my own law clerks. I couldn't say on this podcast what I usually called my law clerks. But it was not ludigators.

The etymology of the term. I have no idea. And of course, from the judicial standpoint, not that this matters to anyone in the world.

One's law clerks would never be called ludic gators or the name plus gators for a federal judge, because the law clerks, you know, they may or may not eventually be litigators, which is the play on the term.

But in any event, that's neither here nor there. And I'm just glad to be with you today. And I hope to hear listeners understand that really the synopsis of my resume was really just to say that I'm old now.

Well, but notably you were the youngest judge 37 on any of the circuit courts at the time you were appointed. That was then, which 37 on the fourth circuit. And I mean, there's a, I mean, there's some fascinating story here you and John Roberts are serving in the Department of Justice together.

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