(in conversation with Professor Mary Katzenstein)
Mary Katzenstein: It’s astonishing: It feels like one minute you were TAing at Auburn and the next thing I know you are clerking for Judge (Ketanji Brown) Jackson. When you were working with her, were there echoes of your time at Auburn?
Julia Mehlman Breyer: More than an echo. Judge Jackson, as I’m sure you know, spent part of her career as a federal public defender and she spent time on the Sentencing Commission. When she first invited me to meet her, she wanted to know what drove me to go to law school and that story usually starts for me with Auburn. We talked about my time at Auburn. I had also spent two years before law school at the Federal Public Defenders Office in the Southern District of NY. That was exactly the kind of space Judge Jackson was in, herself, when she worked in the DC office.
MK: Let’s return in a bit to Judge Jackson. But tell me first about your time in Auburn. You TAed for three years?
JMB: I started my sophomore year and I remember first hearing about it from (Professor) Pete Wetherbee who was a guest speaker in my prison literature class where we were probably reading Norman Mailer. I don’t know what made me say this would be a great idea of something I should do. I can’t fully distinguish the feelings I have now on the back end from what I had then. But my take-away was a huge appreciation for my education. Students at Auburn were so engaged and grateful. A lot of my classmates on campus were, “Here I am at school; let’s go party. They took it for granted- I took it for granted. But what drew me to Auburn in the first place? Probably an intellectual and sociological curiosity.
My current job doesn’t touch on criminal justice. But I still have Auburn on my resume. I want people to understand that this is part of my experience.
MK: what stands out for you from your Auburn experience?
JMB: Walking in the door in the very beginning, I was scared. I didn’t know anyone – a 19 year old woman walking into a room full of men and I didn’t know how I would be received. What I learned quickly was that I was received as a person. Everyone was looking for someone they could have a conversation with. I got comfortable quickly. The distinction between the campus and Auburn discussion still stands. Cornell people are smart, but what we lack is life experience. By most measures, we are privileged college students and the perspective we had was so much shallower than what Auburn students were bringing to the conversation. Sometimes we were talking about the text, sometimes about writing. A lot of times, the men were talking about their lives, about what brought them there [to Auburn], the decisions they would have made differently, what they were angry about, about their choices – choices that are always made in the context of one’s circumstances. There was much more of an intellectual openness and a personal openness in Auburn classrooms than there was in my classrooms on campus.
MK: Did Auburn shape what you wanted to do?
JMB: I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I took a job at the Federal Public Defenders office in NYC. The reason that happened was a conversation at Auburn. I didn’t know much about the criminal justice system even though there was a lawyer in my family – not that kind of lawyer. I wish I could remember who it was, but in the classroom we were talking about one person’s case that led up to his conviction. He didn’t begrudge his public defender who lacked both resources and time. But it was clear that he [the Auburn student] simply didn’t have a fair shot. This was not from someone who said I didn’t do it. In the entire time I was there, nobody ever said that. Every student was big on taking responsibility for their action. So, all this made me want to do it better.
MK: I remember something you said back then about your last day at Auburn.
JMB: That “my last day at Auburn was far more meaningful than my graduation from Cornell.” I knew I wasn’t going back to Auburn certainly not in that particular capacity. I figured I would see Cornell students –That world was going to come with me. Auburn wasn’t.
MK: I also remember how for graduation, your parents arranged for their friends to donate to the program. That May, I would come into the mailing room in my Department only to discover — to my infinite delight — checks in your honor in my mailbox. So right after graduation, you went to the City?
JMB: I think I got the federal defenders job because of my experience at Auburn. As a paralegal in the office, my main responsibility was client contact. That meant talking to defendants many of whom were incarcerated in pretrial detention. Once a week I would go to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and once a week to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan to speak with clients. Some would come to meet with me in the office. What they looked for in that job was someone who was organized and could write but who also had the social skills and respect for the client population and who could build rapport—Auburn was critical for that. Auburn taught me not to “other” people who are in criminal justice situations.
I did it for two years. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a lawyer. Auburn made me want to do public defense work, but was that social work, policy work, legal work? What I learned from that job was that it was very frustrating not to be able to open my mouth in court. I want to be able to be the person who is talking. I applied to law school, to Berkeley. It’s an amazing place. It’s physically beautiful, it’s a bastion of progressive thought. They really care about people and social justice and people’s stories and not just gpa and lsat scores.
MK: But I gather your experience there opened up lots of possibilities and didn’t just direct you to criminal law.
JMB: That’s right. But during my law school career, I did do a lot of criminal law. As an appellate defender in Manhattan (appeals level) the first summer; then I was a semester at the Contra Costa office of public defenders. I spent two years in the Berkeley death penalty clinic working on a single case helping someone who had no resources – in fact is there any one on death row who is not an indigent?
JMB: My first job was at a big law firm. From those externships/internships, I realized that being a state level public defender which is with one exception the only way to do it (federal public defense work requires more experience) was hard. I had that experience in state court and it felt like the wild west to me. The federal court has fewer cases, more time, more writing, slower pace-you are well prepared for everything. In state court, based on my experience in law school and I can also say this after 11 years watching my husband being a public defender in state court, it is like flying by the seat of your pants, being so overloaded, usually losing, even a win is sometimes a loss; there is secondary trauma. I couldn’t do it, and I was disappointed with myself. But that was real. Law school loans are also a real thing. I tried to remind myself of the advice my mother gave me who is also career counselor — that the job decisions you make aren’t forever. It doesn’t mean it’s the job you will have for the rest of your life.
MK: Should we talk about Joe’s work as a public defender (Julia’s husband and nephew of Justice Stephen Breyer)?
JMB: (laugh) I was just going to tell you that one of the things I left out when I said I was going to join a law firm. It did factor into my moral and ethical choice that it was ok for me to go to a law firm since I was at the time dating a public defender. So if I wasn’t going to be one, I could at least help support one. So there’s that. But rewinding three years earlier. I met Joe because I was trying to join the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law. He was a year ahead of me and editor-in-chief of the journal. I did get on the journal which, I would like to say, was unrelated to the fact that I was dating the editor-in-chief. The conversations we had when we were first getting to know each other were about my experience at Auburn; he worked at the VERA Institute in NY. We talked about this stuff all the time. He’s still doing public defense. There is a difference between us: If he wasn’t a public defender, he might be a social worker. He’s interested in the law as a vehicle to help people. I learned through law school that my interest in law school is also a little bit on the academic side. I think the law is interesting. My career is now doing different versions of the law.
MK: Tell me more about your career path?
JMB: Well, it’s been a long and winding path (not that long but very windy). I spent a year at a big law firm, then went to clerk for Judge Jackson. I was her very first clerk. I then clerked for another judge (so in all four years). Then I went to a very small law firm that did some criminal and come civil defense. I got the Criminal Justice Act Panel (CJA panel) which is lawyers who the court appoints to represent indigent defendants when the federal defense office is conflicted out. So I got to do some of that work for three years that I went to law school to do after all. Compared to some of the civil litigation and white collar defense that I did, the CJA case were always my favorite and were much more meaningful work. I left the law firm after three years in the early pandemic –spring 2020 — because it was very hard to have two trial lawyers and two young children. You can imagine two parents horse-trading over which one of us is going to get somebody to cover their court appearance because a kid is home sick. And because Joe is a public defender, and if he weren’t a public defender, who knows what else he would want to do. Because I have this more general interest in the law, I don’t need to be a trial lawyer anymore. I transitioned to being an in-house lawyer for tech companies thinking this could be fun, and it’s been super fun. I first went to Postmates, spent a lot of time there. I was in charge of their litigation. Then I had a short stint at a financial technology company called Chime. Now I’m at Instawork since August 2021 as the associate general counsel. Instawork is another gig economy company which runs a platform for people who are looking for on-demand work who can connect with businesses that has needs to fill.
MK: So interesting. Let’s circle back to your time clerking for Judge Jackson. What is she like?
JMB: She’s absolutely brilliant. I think she has a very clear understanding of the fact that her work impacts not just her staff or the party before her, the lawyers in the courtroom, but also the community in general. A lot of judges have this awareness, but I think she has more, particularly evident in criminal cases because of her background as a federal defender and her experience on the Sentencing Commission. She GETS it.
When she was a trial judge, you could see it in the way she ran her courtroom. In criminal cases, she always took her time and spoke directly to criminal defendants as people- respectfully. In civil matters, some judges don’t hold hearings –they can just rule on the papers. She used to do that sometimes, but more often than other judges in that courthouse, she would hold hearings to make people understand that I’m listening to what you have to say-whether I rule for you or against you. But you can have your day in court. I want you to feel heard and respect the process and know that I respect the process. I think that in her writing, and people may not sit down and read her opinions, people should understand the CARE with which she writes those opinions. She taught me to read aloud every opinion –the entire opinion – no matter how long it was before you finalize it. Because if it sounds awkward saying it aloud it will be even harder to read and therefore even harder to understand. She wanted everyone to understand. She wanted it to be clear to everyone not just the lawyers. SO I still do that. It still gets the read aloud treatment. She’s also just incredibly warm. She’s bubbly, she’s gregarious. She cared about her clerks. She was also at the time (I say this as a 37 year old), she was in her early forties (2013) and she looked young when she took bench. As a young black woman on the bench she had a lot to prove. I remember one incident when the courthouse librarian came into chambers. The judge wasn’t dressed up. There were no hearings that day. The judge was sitting on my desk. The courthouse librarian came into chambers and she said, “hey when the judge gets back, can you tell her I’m looking for her. And the judge said. . . “I’ll tell her!” I watched her build her chambers and create policies and make decisions about how she wanted her courtroom and chambers to function, what she cared about. Once it was announced there would be a search for Justice Breyer’s replacement and it was down to two or three possibilities, her group of former law clerks got together and were in touch with her a lot. On the last day of the confirmation hearing we had a zoom call. And she was exactly the same as she was then-in 2013 when she first took the bench.
MK: What did it feel like to you to watch the hearings?
JMB: It was disappointing and frustrating to watch –but not at all surprising. I was awestruck by her performance, by her ability to stay calm under fire like that and not just under fire but having to deal with such disrespect. A lot of times in confirmation hearings, people talk about whether a nominee has a judicial temperament? If staying calm and trying to redirect questions and refocusing back on her record doesn’t show judicial temperament, I don’t know what would.
MFK: What was the zoom call like?
JMB: It was loud. Her parents, her husband, about 12 law clerks were there. She told personal stories. It was pretty amazing to be that close to history.
MK: Julia, I can’t thank you enough. Any final thoughts?
JMB: The only thing I would add is that if there are current student in the program who want to talk about law school or law careers, I’m happy to speak with them.
(Students should email Mary Katzenstein at mfk2@cornell.edu)