Last week, Ninth Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta took senior status after the confirmation of her successor, Eric Tung. Judge Tung has big shoes to fill: the jurist whose seat he assumed is among the best of her generation.
I could write at length about Judge Ikuta’s important decisions. An essay like that might begin with a few pages on her majority opinion in Democratic National Committee v. Reagan, which distilled the nearly incoherent text of the Voting Rights Act into an administrable test, providing a roadmap the Supreme Court later followed. Next I’d add a couple pages on her dissent in Dukes v. Wal‑Mart — another later‑vindicated opinion that the Supreme Court relied on when it tightened the rules for class‑action certification in Wal‑Mart v. Dukes. I would discuss Judge Ikuta’s dissents in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra (where she established that California violated the First Amendment by forcing advocacy groups to disclose donors’ identities), and in Cedar Point Nursery v. Shiroma (which showed that California violated the Fifth Amendment by allowing labor organizers to enter agricultural employers’ property to solicit unionization). Both of those opinions were, you guessed it, vindicated at One First Street.
Indeed, any exploration of Judge Ikuta’s influence would also need a lengthy accounting of the many occasions on which the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit for errors she identified in dissent. Even that would only scratch the surface, leaving out her important (and subsequently vindicated) majority opinions interpreting the dormant Commerce Clause in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross and the Elections Clause in Gonzalez v. Arizona.
But I want to address a more fundamental aspect of Judge Ikuta’s service to our nation; something her impressive opinions reflect without revealing. Her opinions — her public-facing work — are a product of her unique commitment to the parties in every single case that comes before her. That commitment is revealed in work performed in chambers, outside the public view. And to me, it is Judge Ikuta’s greatest legacy.
By way of background, I had the privilege of clerking for Judge Ikuta from 2012 to 2013. Throughout my clerkship she outworked her clerks. She was in the office from about 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every weekday and often on weekends. I never saw her waste a minute of those long hours. She arrived, took her seat, and worked: drafting and editing opinions, reading briefs, and reviewing the cases on which those briefs relied. Most remarkable, she reviewed the record evidence in every single case before her. No matter how straightforward a case might seem, Judge Ikuta personally examined the key materials from the lower‑court record to ensure she fully understood the issues. She also edited every “bench memo” prepared by her clerks for all three judges on the panel deciding the case. That, too, was unusual. Most judges let clerks prepare these preliminary analyses and send the memos to colleagues with a disclaimer that the memo may not reflect their own views. Not Judge Ikuta. She bore ultimate responsibility for getting the case right, and she would not miss an opportunity to share her best analysis with her colleagues.
I needn’t speculate about why Judge Ikuta worked so hard; she told me. In every case, she explained, there are parties deeply invested in the outcome. For those parties, their case is among the most important issues before the United States government. Each case may be the only, or even final, interaction the parties have with the courts or with American law. And those parties, Judge Ikuta explained, deserve to have their cases taken seriously and decided correctly. They deserve to know that their cases were taken seriously even, and perhaps especially, when they think the cases were decided wrongly. (For the same reason, Judge Ikuta would not use humor in her opinions.)
Her devotion moved me. Judge Ikuta did not personally benefit from working so hard to get every case right. Indeed, one of the perks of Article III tenure is freedom to delegate or to slack; a freedom that must be especially tempting in cases that appear frivolous. But Judge Ikuta aspired to something greater than personal ease. She worked hard because of her dedication to, and respect for, the law and the parties. Judge Ikuta believes there are right answers and that a judge’s duty is to find them. She believes that parties are entitled to a judiciary that strives to find those answers in every case. And she believes that judges must not give the parties and the law anything less than their best.
Judge Ikuta’s best is exceptional. She gives it in every case. We should celebrate her example and her service. And all of us, no matter what we do or where we do it, should strive to live by her example.