Remembering Judge Jolly

Judge E. Grady Jolly of the Fifth Circuit, a great American, died Monday at 88. He was, as I put it in a Mississippi Law Journal tribute when he took senior status, a consummate gentleman and a judge’s judge.

My experience with Judge Jolly, for whom I clerked, began with the most unusual job interview I’ve ever had. One day in the fall of my second year of law school, I got a call asking whether I could talk to the judge by phone the next afternoon. The “interview” lasted about ten minutes and included just two questions: “Are you married?” and “Are you Jewish?”

It wasn’t quite as strange as it sounded. For most of the call, Judge Jolly explained how he ran his chambers and what he expected from his clerks. He asked his questions because he wanted to make sure that a young, single Northerner would feel comfortable living in Jackson, Mississippi—not politically or culturally, but socially. It was a characteristically thoughtful gesture, though at the time I didn’t fully appreciate it.

From the first day in chambers, Judge Jolly made clear that our job was to help him “get the law right”—to follow constitutional, statutory, and common law wherever it might lead. He had no interest in grand theorizing or showy opinions. He was there to decide cases.

That philosophy shaped how he worked. Once, when we received an overly long bench memo—a case outline in preparation for oral argument—from another judge’s chambers, he told me: “Ilya, this is 40 pages for what seems to be a simple case. Come back to me with no more than eight.”

If a draft opinion from another judge ran long, he would stride into the common area outside the clerks’ offices and declare: “Boys, this is 50 pages of purple prose and needless factual background. I don’t want to see it till it’s 12 pages of law.”

His own opinions were clear, disciplined, and focused on the legal question at hand. During my clerkship, one complex case involved Wal-Mart’s practice of taking out life insurance policies on employees with itself as beneficiary. Millions of dollars were at stake.

Yet Judge Jolly’s opinion ran just 11 pages. It methodically traced Texas insurable-interest law back more than a century, while avoiding the temptation to turn a straightforward dispute into a law review article.

Jolly’s commitment to following the law explains why he never fit neatly into ideological boxes. Though widely regarded as a conservative jurist, he authored opinions striking down a Louisiana law requiring the teaching of creationism and blocking enforcement of a Mississippi law that would have closed the state’s only abortion clinic.

In criminal cases, too, he was willing to reverse convictions when the government overstepped constitutional limits. Like his friend Justice Antonin Scalia, he believed that the rule of law required judges to enforce legal boundaries even when doing so was unpopular.

The education he gave his clerks extended far beyond law. For example, Judge Jolly loved Johnny Cash. When I told him that I had started listening to the Man in Black on his recommendation, he immediately quoted the famous lyric: “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”

He also had a taste for Southern literature. When I attempted William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and confessed that I couldn’t make sense of it, he offered this advice: “Oh, I never really understood it myself, but Faulkner’s a good writer to drink by.”

Lessons often came wrapped in homespun aphorisms. If a clerk grew too confident—or too discouraged—he would remind us that “the sun don’t shine on every dog’s behind every day.” And if our legal analysis wandered off course, he would gently redirect us: “You gotta follow the big ’coon and not get lost on any rabbit trails.”

Judge Jolly’s mentorship continued long after the clerkship ended. He kept in touch with his former clerks, often signing emails “your personal judge.” He was much more than a professional role model. Nine years after my clerkship, he officiated my wedding.

Those who worked with Judge Jolly remember not only his clarity of thought and devotion to the rule of law, but also his warmth and irrepressible wit. As his close friend Judge Edith Jones wrote to me, “I hope God is ready for Grady’s outrageous sense of humor.”

Federal judges wield enormous authority. Judge Jolly carried that responsibility with humility, warmth, and quiet dignity. He treated litigants fairly, colleagues respectfully, and his clerks like family.

The federal judiciary has lost a remarkable jurist. Those of us fortunate enough to have worked for him have lost something even more personal: a mentor whose example will continue to guide us for the rest of our lives.

It was my great good fortune to have met and learned from this remarkable man.

Photo: evdokiageorgieva / RooM via Getty Images