Lifetime Achievement: Senior Judge Julie Carnes
She learned from her father "that every case—no matter how insignificant it might otherwise seem— was important to the litigants involved."
June 19, 2019 at 02:00 PM
10 minute read
Julie Carnes recalls, as a child, going door-to-door campaigning for her father, Charles L. Carnes—a Georgia legislator and later a longtime chief judge of the Fulton County State Court.
Yet she was set to pursue a graduate degree in English but on an impulse during her senior year at the University of Georgia took the LSAT. “I took it cold,” she told Robin McDonald in 2009, adding in an understatement, “It worked out well. ”
Carnes graduated from UGA's law school in 1975, clerked for then-Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lewis “Pete” Morgan and gave serious thought to Morgan's offer to become his permanent staff attorney. Instead, in 1978 she secured a job as an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, eventually becoming the office's appellate chief.
In 1989, Carnes served a five-month appointment as special counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. With that job, she said, “All the doors to my future career opened.” With the support of an appellate judge, she was chosen by President George H.W. Bush to join the commission, and two years later he tapped her for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Carnes retired from the sentencing commission at the end of her term in 1996 but, appointed by Chief Justices William Rehnquist and John Roberts Jr., worked on other panels reviewing sentencing and probation. Her interest in the subject went far beyond policy; she experimented with a practice of coming down from the bench to sit, one-on-one, with probationers to inquire about their progress and challenges and express pride when they'd succeeded.
In 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Carnes to the Eleventh Circuit, and she was confirmed by a 94-0 vote by the Senate the following year. She took senior status last year.
What did you learn from your father, a longtime trial court judge, that you have used most in your career on the bench?
My father became a judge when I was an adult, but I began learning useful lessons from him well before then that have been important to me as a judge. Dad was a World War II and Korean War veteran and a lifelong student of American history. And he loved this country. He instilled in me a deep patriotism, part of which was how important the rule of law was in differentiating our country from others. Another lesson was how important average, working people were to the formation and the culture of our country. My father came from the humblest of roots in North Georgia, meaning that I grew up knowing well, and valuing, regular-type people whose names might never be found in a Google search but who did an honest day's work for an honest day's pay and who loved their families, their country, their friends and neighbors and their God. My father instilled in me not just respect but also affection for people from all economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds.
As a judge, my father's sense of decency and fair play was paramount. No matter who the litigants were, it would have been an anathema for my father to rule against the party that deserved to win the case. And he was very conscientious. He brought home case files before trials to make sure he was on top of the facts and legal disputes he was about to hear. He knew that every case—no matter how insignificant it might otherwise seem—was important to the litigants involved.
My dad was chief judge of the Fulton County State Court for 17 years, and he was very respected and effective in that role. Never viewing it as a ceremonial job, he was involved in every aspect of court administration, always working to help the court deliver the best service possible to its citizens. He had a knack for working with people, but he also exhibited firmness when that was needed. And he treated the lowest-paid person in the courthouse with as much respect as he treated the most prestigious lawyer. When I became chief judge on the district court, I tried to emulate him. I don't think I matched his performance and impact, but he provided a wonderful example to follow.
You've devoted significant time to the issue of sentencing—from working with the federal sentencing commission to, as a trial court judge, meeting with probationers personally to encourage their efforts to rejoin society. What is a key misconception you've encountered about criminal sentencing?
I am not sure so much that there are misconceptions as simply inherent difficulties in reaching the goals that any rational sentencing system should seek to achieve. A rational sentencing system should provide penalties sufficient to act as a deterrent to other people who might consider committing the same crime. I think most people would also agree that it should offer punishment that meets the particular crime: not too much and not too little. And for crimes that seriously threaten the safety of its citizens, a rational sentencing system should remove those people from society for a period of time sufficiently long to give some confidence that the perpetrator will not pose a future such risk when released.
How to do the above is difficult because, at the same time, a rational sentencing system should also be a humane system that recognizes that people are fallible and that an unduly harsh system is likewise not the goal. Of course, identifying the right punishment for a particular crime is always the goal. But who gets to decide that question? Having been a prosecutor for 12 years and having witnessed the disparity in sentencing philosophies of different judges—a phenomenon confirmed by all the empirical data—I am convinced that a sentencing system should not leave unfettered sentencing discretion in a particular judge, at least insofar as that judge is dealing with a serious crime that warrants serious attention by our criminal justice system. At the same time, there can be mitigating factors that are specific to the particular offender and to his or her commission of the crime that are not always easily taken into account in a grid with narrow sentencing ranges.
There will never be a perfect sentencing system; instead it is always a work in progress. But I worry that sometimes, in trying to correct a particular sentencing scheme, we careen from too lenient to too harsh and then back again, without aiming for that imperfect, but preferable, middle ground.
From your perspectives on the federal trial and appellate benches, what habits do successful advocates share?
First, you have to separate the written part of advocacy from the oral part. When most members of the public and budding law students think of being a lawyer, understandably they almost always think of being a trial lawyer, because that is the depiction of lawyers that they have seen forever on television shows and movies. And maybe that was the focus of law practice in the not so distant past. But the truth of the matter these days is that most lawyers infrequently get into court. Instead, the vast majority of civil cases are either dismissed prior to trial by the court or they settle. That being so, it means that a federal litigator who wants to succeed will typically need to excel in written advocacy and analysis.
This advice applies equally to appellate advocacy. A litigant who has filed a poor brief cannot expect to be rescued by an outstanding oral argument performance. That does not mean, though, that oral argument is unimportant. For a case in which an advocate has a plausible chance of success, a good oral argument can be extremely important. And the key to that is preparation, practicing out loud your argument and viewing oral argument as a conversation between yourself and the judges to be handled with confidence, candor and a thorough understanding of the legal issues and the record.
A Republican, President George H.W. Bush, appointed you to the federal trial bench, and a Democrat, President Barack Obama, tapped you for the appeals court. How did you manage to appeal to presidents of opposite parties?
I have been fortunate to have had bipartisan support throughout my career. In 1989, when I was an assistant U.S. attorney, I was assigned to a five-month detail assignment with the United States Sentencing Commission. Thereafter, I was nominated by the first President Bush to the Sentencing Commission for a Democratic seat on that body in 1990. During that process, I got great support from Georgia Democrats (including former Sen. Sam Nunn, whose help I will always appreciate), as well as from Georgia Republicans. The Republican selection committee for the district court vacancy became aware of my work on the commission and recommended my appointment to a vacant district court judgeship in 1992.
Having been appointed by a Republican president to the district court, no one could have been more surprised than I was when asked if I would agree to be considered for the Eleventh Circuit via an appointment by a Democrat, President Obama. I will always be very grateful to President Obama and to Sens, Chambliss and Isakson, who together placed their trust in me.
What aspect of legal system would you like to see improved over the next 10 years?
Although it does not directly affect my work as a judge, it saddens me that so many young lawyers leave law school with crippling debt. I would advise anyone thinking of taking on significant law school (or any academic) debt to research carefully what the job placement rate of the particular law school is and the typical salary of its graduates. Ultimately, a student loan system that guarantees payment of whatever tuition amount schools decide to charge is a system that will continue to experience ever rising tuition costs.
I would also like law schools to focus on better preparing their students to actually practice law. Echoing my earlier comment about the importance of written advocacy, this would mean that students need to do a lot more legal writing in law school.
Finally, at least in the criminal defense arena, I think we should explore requiring certification—through academic preparation and practical experience—before a lawyer can represent a criminal defendant. My sense is that, overall, our public defenders do a great job. I certainly know that's the case in the federal system, in which I have worked for 39 years, and I admire greatly our state public defenders who provide representation for a great many criminal defendants. But for attorneys who are not trained in our public defender systems, a more formal training and certification system would better ensure that these practitioners can ably represent their clients.
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