Federal judges usually transfer some of their cases to other judges when they become senior judges.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Lee Rosenthal of Houston said she has no plans to do so, at least not until the Senate names and confirms her replacement.
President-elect Donald J. Trump now has a vacancy after Rosenthal, who was nominated by President H.W. Bush in 1992, assumed senior status on Sunday. In September, she declared her intention to take up the role.
Senior judges have the authority to choose the kinds of cases they hear and how many they hear; they must be at least 65 years old and have been on the bench for at least 15 years. Rosenthal, however, will continue to receive a full compliment for the time being.
In an interview, Rosenthal stated, “I really enjoy what I do, and I like the variety of what I do.”
Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court, who will likewise take on senior status in January, turned down the Houston Landing’s request for an interview.
Rosenthal, who celebrated his 72nd birthday on Saturday, is regularly ranked among Houston’s finest federal judges, who hear cases ranging from constitutional challenges to narcotics offenses. According to Houston Bar Association polls, Rosenthal is praised for her prompt decisions, politeness, fairness, and readiness.
Rosenthal’s friend and colleague, David Levi, a former federal judge and dean of Duke Law School, called the Richmond, Indiana native a perfect judge that attorneys want to appear before.
According to Levi, when she is in control, people feel more at ease because they know they will get their moment to be heard. She will not shut them out or shut them down.
Since being admitted to the Southern District of Texas’ Houston division in 1997, Charles Flood, a criminal defense lawyer in Houston, believes that he has had 20 cases before Rosenthal, including three or four jury trials. He characterized the judge as intellectually curious, intellectually confident, and very fair.
“She’s fair and compassionate when it comes to sentencing, and she’s tough on the defense and the government,” Flood added. Even if it is really difficult, she never lets her views get in the way of doing what is legally required.
The judge is regarded as one of the best in the nation, according to Catherine Bratic, a Hogan Lovells international arbitration lawyer who worked as a clerk for Rosenthal.
According to Bratic, her name was constantly at the top of lists when discussing clerkships, the most reputable district judges in the nation, and the greatest employers.
According to Bratic, Rosenthal explained to her and other law clerks—who assist judges in reviewing pleadings and drafting opinions—that assuming senior status would allow the Texas Southern District to have an additional pair of experts.
There are 770 pending cases and 575 weighted filings per judgeship in the district, which covers 43 counties and includes Houston, Galveston, Victoria, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, McAllen, and Laredo. Only 20 of the 93 district courts in the nation had more weighted case filings per permitted judgeship, per fiscal 2024 data.
In order to manage the existing burden, which Rosenthal, the top judge of the Texas Southern District from 2016 to 2022, believes will only increase as the region’s population grows, the district needs at least three, if not four, more district judges.
Her appointment fills the two vacancies left by the senior status of McAllen Judge Micaela Alvarez in June 2023 and Houston Judge Lynn Hughes in February 2023.
Given how long it has gone without a replacement, the US Judicial Conference views Hughes’ vacancy as an emergency. There will be four openings in the Texas Southern District for President-elect Trump to fill by the time Hanen takes on senior status on January 2.
Rosenthal is a visiting judge who sits on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals once a year, mostly to assist with the backlog of immigration matters in the appellate court. He has also been a district court judge for 33 years, which ends in May. Rosenthal has served as a member of the Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, and Fifth Circuits.
“She enjoys taking on extra work,” Bratic remarked, laughing.
In addition, Rosenthal is well-known in the legal community for having served as the chair of two committees that draft and revise federal court regulations. Rosenthal was named chair of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules by Justice William Rehnquist, who was then the justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2003. Justice John Roberts, the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, named her to the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure in 2007.
Josh Blackman, a law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, stated, “I know that might sound boring to a non-lawyer, but the rules of procedure really define how the courts operate, and I think it’s significant that Chief Justice Roberts trusted Judge Rosenthal to supervise all those matters.”
One of the most fulfilling aspects of her judicial career, according to Rosenthal, was working on the committees.
It gives you back faith in a genuine deliberate process where individuals check their six-shooters before entering and don’t try to put a thumb on anyone’s scale. According to Rosenthal, the goal is to work together to determine what will improve the system overall, without favoring or disadvantageously affecting any one group.
The Biden Bill
Born in 1952 in Richmond, Indiana, Rosenthal moved around a lot as a child because her father taught history. Rosenthal moved to Houston with her family when she was fifteen years old, and she finished her senior year at Bellaire High School. The school, according to Rosenthal, was far bigger than the one she had previously attended in downstate Illinois. She also recalls how hot it was and how, even in those days, Houston was still very expansive. Both of Rosenthal’s parents spent a large portion of their careers at Rice University.
After graduating from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree and a law degree, Rosenthal worked as a clerk for Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Justice John R. Brown, who was instrumental in rulings that imposed desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement.
After returning to Houston, Rosenthal accepted a position with Baker Botts as an attorney, where she remained for 14 years until receiving a nomination to the federal bench in 1992. Since President Joe Biden was then the chair of the committee that appoints federal judges, Rosenthal’s seat and four others in the Texas Southern District were created under the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990, popularly known as the Biden Bill. The Federal Judiciary Center, the instructional and research arm of the federal court system, said the measure marked the final significant enlargement of federal court judgeships.
Rosenthal claimed that her lack of political ties set her apart from the majority of other judicial selections.
According to Rosenthal, I had four young children and was attempting to find a spouse when I finally found one, which presented more difficulties. I therefore didn’t have time to go to or take part in political events. I was quite fortunate.
Unparalleled work ethic
Clerks might anticipate working an eight-hour shift from nine to five for some judges. At least for the year that Bratic worked as her clerk, such was not the case for Rosenthal. According to Bratic, clerking for Rosenthal required a lot of travel when Rosenthal was a visiting judge, as well as late nights and weekends.
Bratic, however, was aware of what she was getting into. The judge is infamous for her work ethic, and she stated that Rosenthal was her first pick for a clerk.
There was a lot of work involved, but it was an amazing experience because you were getting all these amazing possibilities, even more than I would have in a typical clerkship because I was getting the appellate side, Bratic said.
When Rosenthal fractured her arm in a South American mountaineering accident over ten years ago, Bratic added, her work ethic was especially clear. Rosenthal continued to work from home, having her staff move files back and forth, despite the fact that the injury necessitated surgery and extensive bed rest. She also attended hearings remotely, Bratic said, noting it was during a time when Zoom was not commonplace.
Bratic also said Rosenthal is known for going through several drafts and rewrites of opinions before she s satisfied with them. For particularly important cases, she had Bratic and the other clerk at the time write different versions of an opinion.
It really made me a much better writer, because you felt like through that process, it really did get to be a better-reasoned opinion and a better-drafted opinion, Bratic said.
Perhaps the most well-known of Rosenthal’s decisions over the years are those from 2017, which concluded that Pasadena had intentionally diminished the voting power of its Latino citizens and that Harris County had violated the constitutional rights of those accused of low-level offenses by imposing excessive bail. Both werelargelyupheldby the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Bratic said when Rosenthal is preoccupied with a case and can t sleep, she turns to baking.
You d come to the office having, like, worked all night, and somehow, she would have had time to make muffins on top of it. She always made sure we were fed. She d have muffins, brownies, pie I ve never left her chambers without a to-go platter of baked goods, Bratic said.
A judge s judge
Rosenthal s office is located in the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse on Rusk Avenue in downtown Houston. The walls are lined with bookshelves filled with innumerable photographs of colleagues, family and friends, tokens of gratitude like T-shirts and coffee mugs from colleagues and former clerks, and binders containing files from old cases.
Blackman, of South Texas College of Law Houston, said Rosenthal routinely visits law schools around the state, often bringing other judges with her.
In addition to being a full-time judge and visiting judge to appellate courts, Rosenthal is the first vice president of the American Law Institute (ALI), a nonprofit that simplifies and clarifies esoteric aspects of the law.
Levi is the president of ALI and said Rosenthal helps guide the organization and is an influential voice in deciding which projects to tackle. Levi added that Rosenthal epitomizes what it means to be a leading figure in the judiciary.
She s a judge s judge. She s a jewel in the crown of the federal judiciary, he said.
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