A point of honor

The story about Clarence Thomas’s personal assistant extracting payments via Venmo from Thomas’s former clerks to pay for Thomas’s own Christmas party — a key to understanding the contemporary class system in the US is that the higher your SES, the less you ever actually pay for anything — reminded me of a story I once heard Ronald Dworkin tell about the legendary judge Learned Hand.

Dworkin clerked for Hand near the end of Hand’s career, when he had already taken senior status, meaning he was semi-retired. At that time, it was the custom for federal judges to use their government expense accounts to pay clerks a bonus of a month’s salary at the end of the clerks’ terms. Dworkin was getting married, and he was hoping to use this expected bonus to help pay some expenses, including a honeymoon.

So near the end of his term he asked Hand if he could expect to receive the traditional bonus from the judge’s government expense account. Hand explained that he would not be receiving this bonus, as Hand disapproved of the practice as a misappropriation of government money. It was especially inappropriate in this case, he said, because he was in effect already retired.

On the last day of his clerkship, Dworkin went to say goodbye to the judge. Hand shook his hand, wished him well, and handed him an envelope. When he opened it later that day, Dworkin found a personal check from Hand for the equivalent of one month’s salary.