Sadly, lawsuits are slow and expensive. The emotional and financial toll can be extreme. I see it every day. It is a tragedy. Good judges can limit the damage. My record shows I do that.

Not everything at the Court is work. The Court is a small place, like a family. Like any family, it has its quirky traditions and fun. These fun traditions help build the special collegiality that the Court usually enjoys, whether or not it gets reported. They remind you just how lucky you are to be part of an institution like the Court.

Clerking for the United States Supreme Court is a difficult job to obtain, and very demanding once you have it. Earlier in my career, I was lucky enough to be picked for that job. Once you get to the Court, you help with the three major areas of the Court’s work.

People often ask me what it was like to work for the United States Supreme Court. Working at the Court was one of the honors of my life. This week, I am going to provide three short posts about that experience.

Appellate decisions guide future cases. Litigants, lawyers, and judges rely on the cases decided today to understand the law tomorrow and for years to come.

Good judges understand that they only have power to act because they are faithfully applying the laws as they are written. Good judges know that laws only have power because the people who appear in court approved those laws, either directly or through their legislators. This is as fundamental as the Declaration of Independence, which says governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The Illinois Third District Appellate Court’s Third District is composed of: DuPage, Will, Bureau, Grundy, Iroquois, Kankakee, and LaSalle counties.

An appellate court is a court of review, which looks at decisions issued by the trial court below and determines if they should be affirmed or reversed.