Yet it is also an example of the tenacity, creative boldness, courage, and willingness to challenge authority and convention that have marked the career of Royce C. Lamberth, chief U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia. In a public service ca- reer that has spanned the Army, the District of Columbia’s U.S. attorney’s office, and 20 years on the federal bench, Judge Lamberth has never been afraid to come under fire for what he thought was right.
A sense of integrity—of maintaining con- sistent beliefs and conforming words and actions to them, of following through on commitments, and of refusing to compromise certain core principles—has been apparent throughout Lamberth’s career.
Lamberth “believes every person—whether it’s the president of the United States or an administra- tive clerk—has a duty to serve the American people and do their duty as required under the law.”
Even though Lamberth’s scolding of government lawyers who show a lack of diligence or candor “may feel extremely cutting, and even derisive at times if you’re the recipient of his critique,” Leonnig observes, “if you’re the taxpayer or the employee or the everyday Joe whose life is affected by government policy or decision making, it would seem like the right standard.” For instance, for a decade, Lamberth prodded along the massive, lumbering Indian trust fund case, cementing his reputation as something of a maverick who demanded that gov- ernment agencies live up to the standards of good faith and fair dealing that the public deserves. That case is finally inching its way toward resolution before another judge, and scores of Native Ameri- cans have expressed their gratitude to Judge Lamberth for taking the time to understand their story and for applying unrelenting pressure to see that justice was done.
Despite his success, he works just as much as his clerks do—if not more—and he admits that “there’s no substitute for hard work. I don’t think I ever did well for any reason other than that I worked hard.” While Lamberth is known in some quarters as quick to crack down on lawyers who don’t meet his expectations, Mark Nagle points out that “he is just as quick and generous with words of praise and words of recognition.” The judge’s clerks have seen his many sides, as has any lawyer who has practiced before him for long. Judge Lamberth’s natural impulse is to like people and to sympathize with them. He has a hearty, often irreverent, but always good-natured sense of humor, and when the guffaws start to ema- nate from his office, his clerks know that he is soon to burst out with another “Can you believe this?” story. They also know that, even though he tries, in his words, to “give each case my best shot and not worry about it after the fact,” Judge Lamberth sees and appreciates the human side of every case that comes before him—whether it involves high government officials, big-money litigation, or the individual men and women caught on the wrong side of D.C.’s drug trade.
That ability to focus on the practical reality of each case is a skill Lamberth honed over the course of many major cases with significant consequences. Judge John Sirica, the Watergate judge who also served as chief judge of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, once said that “a great intellectual doesn’t make a great trial judge. A man who’s been a trial lawyer is a better judge of human nature than Professor X at Harvard, who’s probably never been in the well of a courtroom. ... The important question is whether a judge is honest and does he have the courage of his convictions to do what is right at the moment.”
Royce Lamberth has faced many a tough moment ever since Vietnam, each time drawing on the courage of his convictions to do what is right without hesitation.
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