Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They've Ever Made

• Pages: 233
• Citation: Vol. 92 Pg. 233
• Publication year: 2021

Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They've Ever MadeCLAIM NO. 92 CBJ 233Connecticut Bar JournalJune 18, 2019

Henry S. Cohn, Judge ^[*]

Russell F. Canaan, Gregory E. Mize, and Frederick H. Weisberg, eds., New York, New York, 2018. 280 pages.

In Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They've Ever Made, thirteen trial judges—the three editors, who are from Washington, D.C., plus ten other contributors from around the country— relate their most difficult judicial experiences. Their topics include cases that made national headlines, cases that moved the judges to tears, and cases that helped train the judges to act more judiciously.

Three essays in Tough Cases discuss nationally known cases conducted in politically charged circumstances. In the first, the judge in the Terri Schiavo case sets forth the complex facts that he found and the controversial decisions that he made. Schiavo's efforts to control her weight caused cardiac arrest and brain damage. She never recovered and passed into a vegetative state and was dependent on life support. When her husband, who served as her court-appointed guardian, sought an order for the removal of life support on the grounds that Schiavo would have wanted that, her parents objected. The trial judge allowed Schiavo's life support to be disconnected, following Florida law and precedent. A national right-to-life group took up the parents' cause, and the case caused a national stir. Legislation was passed in Schiavo's home state of Florida, eventually found to be an unconstitutional infringement on the powers of the judiciary, and by Congress. The judge gives a narrative of the two trials that he conducted, stating the positions of the parties and of the experts who supported and that differed with his conclusions. More importantly for the theme of this book, the court's decisions, upheld on appeal, led to personal consequences for the judge. His life was threatened and he was given police protection. He was also shunned by community leaders and members of his church. For this judge, this life or death decision took a personal toll.

The second nationally known decision involved the trial of Scooter Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney, in the Washington, D.C., federal court on a charge of disclosing classified CIA information. He was convicted, but President George W. Bush commuted his thirty-month prison sentence following a failed appeal, and President Donald Trump granted him a complete pardon. The trial judge raises in his essay the perennial difficulty of...