A Lion in Winter: Senior Circuit Judge J. Clifford Wallace at 92

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 3
• Publication year: 2021
• Author: By Dan Lawton

A Lion in Winter: Senior Circuit Judge J. Clifford Wallace at 92

By Dan Lawton

Dan Lawton practices in the appellate and professional liability groups of Klinedinst PC in San Diego.

On a sunny August morning in 2021, I arrive at the chambers of Senior Ninth Circuit Judge J. Clifford Wallace in downtown San Diego. Wallace's domain sits on the fourth floor of the federal courthouse on west Broadway. There is a warren of offices — separate quarters for three law clerks, a server room, and storage areas lined with shelves laden with briefs and excerpts of appellate records. The walls are clad in handsome wood paneling. The ceilings are 16 feet high. Two young male law clerks, speaking in hushed tones, greet me. They are dressed in suits and ties. In the carpeted aerie above Broadway, a librarial silence prevails.

The Judge greets me with an elbow bump and ushers me into his chambers. They are massive. The Judge reports, with a gleam in his eye that looks like pride, that they are larger than the Oval Office of the White House, by a margin of 100 square feet. The polished wood of the desktop is immaculate. The single object that rests atop it is a letter opener. No letters are visible.

Cliff Wallace has been a federal judge since 1970, when President Richard Nixon appointed him to a spot on the U.S. District Court bench. Two years later, Nixon elevated Wallace to the Ninth Circuit, where he has sat ever since. Today he is 92 years old. He is elegantly dressed in a dark blue suit, light blue dress shirt with French cuffs, and a blue tie. Wallace has a nice head of salt-and-pepper hair, combed back in a quiff style. Lean and angular, he looks easily 25 years younger than his age. He works out daily with a physical trainer somewhere in the courthouse.

Cliff Wallace was practicing law when most of California's lawyers today were not yet born. He's also been on the Ninth Circuit longer than most of them have been alive. When he arrived at the Ninth Circuit in 1972, the court had 11 judges. Today it has 47. On his watch, eight presidents have entered and left office, 32 of his own colleagues have died, and California has grown from a state of 20 million inhabitants to nearly double that.

Today, Wallace, as he does every day, keeps to a rigorous schedule. I am told he prefers all doors in his chambers be closed at all times, except when one is using it to enter or exit a room. Before I am ushered in to see the Judge, each law clerk compulsively shuts an untended open door, battening down every last hatch.

The Judge welcomes me graciously. I tell him I am tired of the sameness of print interviews of federal judges. What should attorneys strive for in oral argument? How could brief-writing

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be improved? Do you read footnotes or not? Blah, blah, blah.

Today I want to ask some different questions, I tell him.

Wallace regards me with a smile and a gimlet eye. "Fire away," he says.

Q. What have you learned about judging?

A. "As a lawyer at Gray Cary, I did heavy-duty civil litigation for 15 years. Going to the trial bench didn't change the theater I was in. I was used to being in court. I was more comfortable in court than I was elsewhere, I think.

"The only thing that gave me great concern was dealing with criminal justice. I had not tried criminal cases, only done civil litigation. I had a great deal of sympathy for people that get into these messes. There are some mean people around. But there's a lot of people that get into these things just by making foolish decisions. I was sympathetic with them because as I would review the presentence report, I would see they came from poor areas. They grew up in an area where they did not have role models; their parents were not making sure that their school-work was being done. I grew up in a poor area with parents who did not care whether I did anything in school. I had an alcoholic father. He didn't care what I did as long as I did not get in trouble with the police. He never asked once if I did my homework.

"I was not prepared when I finished high school to accomplish much. I was fortunate to go into the...