Analytical clarity is the result of hard, syllogistic thinking, and that thinking has to be done alone. It's not just being physically alone but also alone with your thoughts - not looking at your phone, not hearing the buzz of an incoming text message or email.

Raymond Kethledge

Categorized in : Looking Alone Thoughts Thinking

In my view, statutory ambiguities are less like dandelions on an unmowed lawn than they are like manufacturing defects in a modern automobile: they happen, but they are pretty rare, given the number of parts involved.

Raymond Kethledge

happen pretty view like

A lawyer who makes an impression as credible, competent, and civil is one whose thoughts I'll take seriously.

Raymond Kethledge

seriously thoughts impression lawyer

Reading a brief filled with ad hominem attacks is like listening to my kids fight, except that I have to wait until we're in the courtroom to tell the attacking lawyer what I think about it.

Raymond Kethledge

wait fight lawyer reading

Among the most serious allegations a federal court can address are that an Executive agency has targeted citizens for mistreatment based on their political views. No citizen - Republican or Democrat, Socialist or libertarian - should be targeted or even have to fear being targeted on those grounds.

Raymond Kethledge

being political serious fear

I would make sure that the values that I would be enforcing if I were a judge are not just my values.

Raymond Kethledge

make judge just values

I won't write about a subject unless I've mastered it.

Raymond Kethledge

unless subject write about

I use solitude as a judge and as a person - a lot.

Raymond Kethledge

person judge solitude use

While driving to work, I'll choose to think about a particular subject rather than just have random thought streams landing on one subject or another. For example, I might think about the structure of an opinion. Or I might think about the first sentence of an opinion, refining it.

Raymond Kethledge

random think opinion work

Cell-site data - like mailing addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses - are information that facilitate personal communications rather than part of the content of those communications themselves. The government's collection of business records containing these data, therefore, is not a search.

Raymond Kethledge

search phone government business

The First Amendment protects the Internet.

Raymond Kethledge

amendment first-amendment internet

In my own opinions as a judge, I have never yet had occasion to find a statute ambiguous.

Raymond Kethledge

judge own never my-own

The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation's interests and enforcing its laws - all of them, not just selective ones - in a manner worthy of the department's name.

Raymond Kethledge

name tradition justice long

Values that I would be enforcing if I were a judge are not just my values, that I am not striking something down simply because I don't like it. That is a countermajoritarian aspect of our system of government. I would start with the text.

Raymond Kethledge

i-am judge down government

I love to write.

Raymond Kethledge

write i-love love