Legal News

Bigger Things on the Horizon for Chicago Federal Judge Amy St. Eve?

By Ashby Jones

We’re always on the lookout for new names to add to the list of potential Supreme Court nominees. So we were thrilled this weekend when we stumbled over this profile from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which tossed out a “new” name: Amy St. Eve.

Judge St. Eve’s name is likely familiar to Law Blog readers as the judge who presided over the Conrad Black case last year. Earlier this year, she sentenced the media baron to 6 1/2 years in prison for fraud and obstruction of justice. And soon, the Chicago federal judge will sentence Tony Rezko, the onetime Barack Obama associate who was convicted in her courtroom in June of using his connections to Illinois state boards so he could bribe contractors.

But according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article — a hometown-gal-makes-good piece (St. Eve grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Ill.) — St. Eve’s best days might be ahead of her. “Some day, her colleagues and the media speculate, she’ll be a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court.”

That might be getting ahead of the game a bit, but St. Eve does seem to be on a fast track. After graduating first in her class from Cornell Law School in 1990, St. Eve went to Davis Polk. From there, she was hired to Ken Starr’s team investigating the Whitewater matter. Later, she worked as a federal prosecutor and then as an in-house lawyer at Abbott Labs. In 2002, President Bush nominated her to the federal bench, making her one of the youngest women ever appointed to the federal bench. She was 36.

Our favorite part of the piece: the glimpse we get into what Judge St. Eve thinks about while presiding over the courtroom. “There’s such a human element to it from jury selection on,” she says. “It’s fun to watch good lawyers. I love the factual parts of cases, watching witnesses testify and seeing how things unfold.”

Another intriguing tidbit: The story cites David Lat’s hilarious old site, Underneath Their Robes, in quoting that lawyers found her “distractingly attractive” and that her appearance made it “difficult to appear in front of her.” Huh.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 11, 2008 (boomark / email).