The Third Circuit issued an opinion on Friday, perhaps you heard?
It was a dramatic day that capped a dramatic season for the court, which found itself the epicenter of President Trump’s efforts to upend the results of the 2020 presidential election in the courts. A link to Friday’s opinion—authored by Judge Bibas and surely among the most important opinions in the court’s history—is here.
[Disclosure: I was among counsel that filed an amicus brief in the appeal urging affirmance.]
I posted commentary about the appeal and about the election litigation generally on Twitter, much of it aimed at explaining what was happening to the non-lawyer public.
On Saturday, I posted a long, admiring thread on Twitter discussing Chief Judge Smith and his role in the election litigation. It began:
Our darkest time has been his finest hour.
The Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, D. Brooks Smith, is one of the heroes of this horrible year. That is both deeply ironic and squarely in character.
(A very, very long thread.) 1/
— Matthew Stiegler (@MatthewStiegler) November 28, 2020
50 tweets later, it ended:
Back in 2002, who would have predicted that the judge that liberals had just fought so furiously to block would now be the judge who, as much as any other, held the line against Trump and Trumpism?
Who?
Anyone who knew him, that’s who.
/end
— Matthew Stiegler (@MatthewStiegler) November 28, 2020
If you’re interested in reading the whole thread, here is a link that makes it easier to read.
The response to my effort to tell Chief Judge Smith’s story has floored me. I’ve wanted to tell it for years now, and I can’t express how satisfying it is that it’s resonated with so many other people, too.