Lawfare Daily: The Besieged District Judges, with Reynolds Holding and Judge Jed Rakoff
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
Veteran legal journalist Reynolds Holding, author of "Better Judgment: How Three Judges Are Bringing Justice Back to the Courts," and U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, one of the judges featured in his book, sit down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff to discuss the role of district judges in our justice system. They also discuss the attacks those judges are enduring today from the Department of Justice, the White House, Congress, and even members of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Nearly every news alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. |
| 0:07.5 | And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. |
| 0:18.3 | You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at 202-643-8474. Or by sending a |
| 0:27.7 | recording of yourself asking your question to Ask Us Anything Lawfare at gmail.com by December 16th. |
| 0:36.7 | These judges are applying the law. These judges are not being creative. These judges are applying the law. |
| 0:38.9 | These judges are not being creative. |
| 0:40.9 | These judges are not figuring out how to get around some issue, trying to get a certain result. |
| 0:47.3 | I mean, it's very clear in, I think, every case that the law is what they're following. |
| 0:56.0 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Roger Parloff, senior editor at Lawfare, and I'm with Reynolds |
| 1:02.7 | Holding, author of the book Better Judgment, and U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff. |
| 1:09.7 | I think all judges should be active in looking closely at the cases that are presented to them. |
| 1:21.4 | And the fact that the parties may have come to an agreement is highly relevant. |
| 1:26.4 | We want to encourage agreements where |
| 1:28.6 | possible, but we don't want to encourage collusive settlements. We don't want to encourage |
| 1:34.5 | settlements that are contrary to the law. Today we're talking about Wren's book, about district |
| 1:42.3 | judges, and about, quote, bringing justice back to the courts. |
| 1:48.0 | So, Ren, what was your goal in writing the book, and what did you mean by bringing justice back to the |
| 1:54.0 | courts? |
| 1:55.1 | Well, in writing the book, my goal was that I wanted to tell the story about the people who do the real work of the federal courts. |
| 2:04.6 | I mean, so much attention is paid to the Supreme Court, as you know. |
| 2:08.9 | So many people write about it, talk about it, worry about it. |
| 2:13.9 | And I wanted to tell the story of the men and women who have the last word in the hundreds of thousands of cases every year that never go up on appeal, that the Supreme Court never comes close to seeing, the people who in relative obscurity stand up every day for the rule of law and who in some cases |
... |
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