I had the great privilege of serving as a law clerk to Judge James L. Buckley, and for me he was an exemplar of dedication and fidelity – dedicated to preserving the Constitution and faithful to truth and to the first principles of republican self-governance.
Coming out of Michigan Law School in 1988, I had a rather loose and left-leaning political mindset. I had applied for clerkships on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – but only to the liberal judges, and they had all turned me down. After settling into practice at Covington & Burling in D.C., I tried again, this time applying to every judge on the court, and JLB invited me in for an interview.
I was lucky. He liked that I had worked in the real world before law school, and he had a personal fondness for Covington lawyers. Covington partner Brice Claggett had represented then-Senator Jim Buckley in championing First-Amendment freedoms over election-law restrictions. Volume 424 of the U.S. Reports – the volume containing the Supreme Court’s seminal opinion in Buckley v. Valeo – sits prominently on a bookshelf next to an enrobed Judge Buckley in his official court portrait (along with a small ceramic polar bear, signifying the Judge’s love and reverence for the wildlife of the great frozen north, where he frequently trekked).
My year of service with the Judge left me changed – more directed, more disciplined, more understanding of the proper use of federal power, of the role of Article III courts, and of the responsibilities of citizenship in our Republic. Judge Buckley had a compelling and positive influence on the direction of my career, as I know he did for so many others.
To every judge in the federal courthouse in D.C. and to all who knew his work on the court, JLB was a model of what a judge should be – truly a judge’s judge – amazingly studious in digesting the ins and outs of every case, supremely careful about discerning and following the law (he referred to controlling Supreme Court precedents as “the gospel”), and invariably respectful of and courteous to all parties who came before him, regardless of their positions and motivations. His published opinions were models of clarity and precision, scrupulously free of footnotes and any unnecessary side details.
Up close and personal, he was humble and self-deprecating, never haughty. He usually focused with quiet intensity on the things that really mattered, but he was also quick to flash a smile and share a humorous observation, often at his own expense.
On the wall in his chambers hung a framed album cover I recognized from my hippier days: Neil Young’s On the Beach. A long-haired Neil is seen from behind, staring out to sea, with the rear fin of a yellow Cadillac strangely protruding from the sand, next to an umbrella-topped table and chairs, and under the table, a newspaper with the banner headline, “SEN. BUCKLEY CALLS FOR NIXON TO RESIGN.” The Judge explained with a smile that his son had given it to him; he wasn’t familiar with Neil Young and had never listened to the album.
Though he had served history in the senior ranks of all three branches of the federal government, he readily acknowledged that his greatest asset, both personally and professionally, was his amazing wife, Ann Buckley, who was absolutely beloved by the Judge’s entire extended clerkship family.
To the end of his life, JLB spoke out for the Constitution and remained interested in the challenges of self-governance and the issues of the day. In 2014, at age 91, he published Saving Congress from Itself, an articulate manifesto for ending Congress’s practice of approving massive grants to state and local governments – spending that often comes encrusted with regulatory conditions reaching far beyond the proper scope of federal power.
In November 2019, when he was 96, there was JLB, at the Cato Institute, seated with other retired judges in the front row for a screening of Michael Pack’s film, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. And around that time, coming into the ground floor of the West Wing in the White House complex, I was quite surprised to encounter the Judge, hanging out in the waiting area. He nonchalantly told me he had taken an Uber down from his independent- living facility in Maryland – evidently meeting with some senior adviser to the president (or, who knows, maybe with the president himself) on one or another matter of national interest. Unforgettable!
If you want to get a good sense of the full sweep of JLB’s professional and family life, his consequential career, and his unique place in American history, check out his annotated oral history, Gleanings from an Unplanned Life. What you’ll find is that his was an exemplary 100-year life of service and faith, one most worthy of celebration: a good man, a humble servant, a stalwart defender of the Constitution, a great thinker, and a judge’s judge.
R.I.P., JLB.
Steven G. Bradbury was a law clerk to Judge Buckley in 1990–1991 and to Justice Clarence Thomas in 1992–1993. During the Trump administration, he served as the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Transportation, as acting deputy secretary of transportation, and briefly as acting secretary. During the Bush 43 administration, he headed the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.