You Think Your Judge Is Hostile?

The DC Circuit has removed US District Judge Royce Lamberth from the longstanding (to put it mildly) litigation over the Interior Department’s management of Indian trust funds, after reversing one of his orders for the eighth time. (Via Bashman). Even if you’ve followed this dispute as it has grown progressively nastier since the mid-1990s (when it was already quite nasty indeed), you have to read the opinion to believe it – while the DC Circuit acknowledged that the Interior Department’s conduct in the litigation and the underlying dispute has been deplorable, it agreed that a judge who viewed the Department and its counsel at Justice as irredeemably “villainous racists” (in the government’s phrase) “could contribute to a reasonable observer’s belief that Interior stands
no chance of prevailing whatever the merits of its position.”