Last week, How Appealing linked to a new article in the Minnesota Law Review by Professor Xiao Wang, titled "The Old Hand Problem." The thesis of the article is that judges take senior status strategically. That is, Republican-appointed judges take senior status during Republican administrations. And Democratic-appointed judges take senior status during Democratic administrations. Tell me something I don't know. Indeed, shortly after the 2020 election, I wrote a blog post titled "Which Ninth Circuit Judges Were Waiting For A Democratic President to Take Senior Status?" I teased an article that I was working on with James Phillips "about judges who strategically time their taking of senior status." James and I in fact did start writing that article, but we ultimately abandoned the effort, in part, because the conclusions confirmed conventional wisdom.
I glanced at Wang's article and didn't think much of it. (The title, though, seems like something of a mixed metaphor, because an "Old Hand" usually is a positive word that refers someone with skill or experience).
But then a Volokh reader flagged a passage about me in the article:
