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The John Batchelor Show

S8 Ep652: 4. The Removal Dispute of Judge Pauline Newman Guest: Richard Epstein Summary: Epstein critiques the suspension of 98-year-old Judge Pauline Newman, arguing her colleagues lack cause for removal. He characterizes the move as "manipulative shenanigans" dri

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2026

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

4. The Removal Dispute of Judge Pauline Newman Guest: Richard Epstein Summary: Epstein critiques the suspension of 98-year-old Judge Pauline Newman, arguing her colleagues lack cause for removal. He characterizes the move as "manipulative shenanigans" driven by internal politics rather than intellectual incompetence. (4)
1920 MOSCOW

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm John Bachelor with Professor Richard Epstein.

0:18.7

Richard and I are seniors. He's more senior than I am, but not much.

0:22.7

Now, it's inspiring to learn that Judge Pauline Newman and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

0:29.7

is active and vivid and what should have to say, determined to continue working, though she is 98 years old, God bless her.

0:40.5

Richard, I do not understand this reasoning.

0:43.7

She has now in no way given an excuse to those who want to remove her from the bench about misconduct,

0:50.4

and yet they're keeping her on ice.

0:52.3

Why are they doing this?

0:54.8

I have to say it probably has to do with internal petty politics.

0:59.3

I don't know Pauline well, but I know her work pretty well.

1:02.9

This is an amazing woman.

1:04.8

She is 98 years old.

1:06.5

She was a scientist beforehand.

1:08.6

I think she graduates from law school, around 1959. I've talked to

1:12.6

many of her former clerk. She's the sharpest attack when she writes his opinion. And in fact,

1:18.1

she's way up there in the distribution in terms of her intellectual capability and curiosity.

1:23.9

What happens is the chief justice there just didn't want her to sit now my view if you want to stop

1:29.2

somebody from sitting what you have to do is show courts and that means you have to say well here

1:34.3

she was sitting on the bench falling asleep here she managed to write an opinion where she got all

1:39.1

the facts wrong something of that particular state to indicate that there's some defect in performance.

1:45.5

And if you could prove that, then I think it's appropriate to say, okay, now we want you to go through the test to see where their function.

1:52.0

There's a famous judge named McComb, and it took forever to get him off the court in California.

...

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