Love, Jack
I was fond of Judge Jack B. Weinstein before I ever met him. I knew of his reputation for being a wily old Brooklyn federal judge with a penchant for making good trouble. I knew he was a giant in sentencing law, a master of evidence and procedure, and singlehandedly reshaped how the law approached big, societal harms. I knew he made the world more just. I didn’t know — and couldn’t imagine — that the person behind the legacy would be even better.
I was thrilled when my law school journal honored Judge Weinstein my final year of school. I played a small role in putting together the ceremony to honor him. I met the Judge briefly that night; he asked me to point him in the direction of the bathroom. A few weeks later, I got a note in the mail, thanking me for my time. It was signed, with what I would later learn was his trademark, “Fondly, Jack.” That was awesome. A letter from a legend.
When the Judge posted a clerkship job, I jumped at the opportunity. I interviewed with the Judge when he was a crisp 95-years-old. I didn’t think I’d get the job, but I figured I’d at least have some fun talking with the dean of the federal judiciary and a bona fide hero. I had a great time at the interview, made friends with the clerks, and — much to my shock — got offered the job on the spot. Overjoyed, I immediately accepted the position. The Judge’s response: “no.” I was in disbelief, had the offer been rescinded? Seeing the confusion on my face, he smiled at me and told me to take the weekend, talk to my family, and make sure I didn’t want to clerk for a younger, more vibrant judge (as ridiculous a proposition as that was). “The law schools pressure you to accept immediately, without regard for whether it’s good for you or your family,” he said. I had nothing to think about — this was my dream job — but I nonetheless took the weekend to talk it over with my family, and appreciated that I was going to be working for someone who was not only a giant in his field, but was also kind. I later learned he had been pulling some variant of this shtick for at least 30 years: to my knowledge, no one ever declined the job after thinking it over.
Working for the Judge was fantastic and fantastical. The judge, my co-clerk Abe, and I all got on the elevator one time wearing a blue suit and brown shoes. The judge chuckled, and said, “this is so funny, Jack used to make fun of Bobby, for wearing this color combination.” I paused, “Kennedy?” I asked. He looked at me quizzically: “do you know a different Jack and Bobby?” Thurgood referred to his mentor, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth, his friend and student Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Teddy, of course, his friend, the kid-Kennedy. These were his contemporaries.
He loved to work. And he was great at what he did. He would arrive early in the morning, greet the law clerks with his broad smile, sit down at his desk, and plow through a stack of papers like a mad man. Then he’d walk into the clerks’ office and ask for more work. As many know, he didn’t sit up high on the judge’s bench, we all sat together at a conference table to symbolically and literally work out our problems as a group — judge, clerks, litigants, lawyers, and his trusted case manager, June Lowe.
And then there were the times he blew me away with his wisdom. One particular day, he was disappointed with an intern’s work. He didn’t respond with anger; instead he pulled us all into his office and talked through the issues with the draft opinion — it was too rote, he said. “I’ve spent the last 60 years of my life trying to unlearn my first day of law school,” he told us. The rub: jettison the dogma. Put people first, don’t be a cog in the wheel of a broken system.
Judge Weinstein had an ability to learn and grow throughout his life that I hope to emulate. When the Judge learned a new fact or way of doing something, he didn’t get defensive, he changed. When I was clerking, he came to the view that marijuana (a drug he hated) was too often being used as a tool to incarcerate young Black men unjustly. He confessed error in his past and wrote a long, thoughtful opinion on how he would forge a new path forward. In 1993, he could no longer stomach the cruelty of harsh sentences he was being forced to give as part of the “war on drugs.” So, he stopped. He explained to his colleagues that he was “a tired old judge who has temporarily filled his quota of remorselessness.”
The judge was aware of his own mortality, and not afraid to confront it. He was frequently asked to write a memoir. As a personal response to this, he wrote a poem, detailing his struggle with reliving the past, while continuing to striving for justice in the future (that poem sits in my scrap book). Most of his friends had long since passed away, so had his wife, Evelyn (he remarried to the wonderful Susan). He encouraged his clerks to carry on his lifelong pursuit of justice. On several occasions, he pulled me and my co-clerk into his office and told us, “I’ve lived a wonderful life, you have so much ahead of you, I hope you lead a wonderful life too.”
He retired because his body would no longer permit him to do his job. In his exit interview with the New York Times, he talked about the role of love in his philosophy of life. I’m not sure I had realized this before, but love was the center of what made him great. He saw the defendants he sentenced as people — people loved by family and friends, who made horrible mistakes and were often born into devastating circumstances. Love is what drove him to create new legal theories, and do what he did best: help people. He sent out this poem when he retired: “Judges poets friends of ours/I love you/You made our lives lovely.”
Shortly after his retirement, a curious thing happened. The judge sent an email (a history lesson really) to our clerks listserve. He signed it “Fondly and Love.” I’d seen hundreds of his letters: he signed all of them “Fondly, Jack.” That was his literal and figurative signature.
About a year later, I had the privilege of editing an issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter dedicated to the Judge. My co-editor, Carolin, mailed him a copy. A few weeks later, we received a letter back thanking us for our work. The Judge’s handwriting was shaky and weak. He had dropped the “fondly.” He signed it simply, “Love, Jack.”
There is so much more to say about Jack Weinstein. But in the end, I will remember my Judge more for his kindness than his body of work, for his wisdom more than his fame, for his capacity to love over his ability to produce. For his boundless compassion, unlimited passion, and other-worldly ability to change — down to the end, at 99 years old, from “fondly” to “love” — I will love the Judge. Thank you, my dear Judge. Love, Ryan.