Did Comment by Chief Justice Roberts Diss Special Masters?
If Kristin Myles of Munger, Tolles & Olson is nursing any hurt feelings as a result of a remark last month by the chief justice, she isn’t letting on.
Myles was appointed special master in a case of original U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction involving a water rights dispute between two states, according to the National Law Journal. During oral arguments, the justices were considering her recommendation that intervenors be permitted as parties in the litigation.
A lawyer for the intervenors suggested that Myles’ recommendation was entitled to some deference since she was in the best position to know which parties could be of assistance. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “replied tartly,” according to the National Law Journal account.
“This is our original jurisdiction,” Roberts said. “I regard the special master as more akin to a law clerk than a district judge. We don’t defer to an aide that we have assigned to help us gather things here.”
The National Law Journal’s reaction: “Ouch! Even if Roberts were trying to be a devil’s advocate, it came across to some in the field as a demeaning comparison. Here are just a few ways in which special masters are different from law clerks: Special masters get paid upwards of $500 an hour, they collect the entire record of the case, hold hearings, manage the litigation from start to finish and make lengthy public recommendations to the court that form the basis of the court’s resolution of the case.”
The National Law Journal asked Myles for comment, but she declined to respond to Roberts’ remark. She did talk about the role of special masters generally in original jurisdiction cases. Their role, she said, is to assist the court, and special masters are “not really akin to a lower court whose judgment is being reviewed on appeal.”
