Osler's Razor

I'm devoting Wednesdays to profiling my classmates in the Yale Law class of 1990.

James E. Boasberg (who was known, at least in law school, as "Jeb") came to Yale Law from four years at Yale College and a few more at Oxford. He was one fo the "Tall Boys" who shared a house for a few years and were generally a friendly lot.

Jeb was from DC, but clerked in the 9th Circuit and relocated to San Francisco for a while after law school before DC pulled him back. After stints at a couple of big firms, before spending time as an Assistant US Attorney there. (Interestingly, he was a federal prosecutor at the same time as me and previously profiled classmates Mike Schwartz and Rich Sullivan).

After five years of prosecuting, he became a Superior Court judge in DC and then was unanimously confirmed to the District Court there in 2010, having been picked for the job by President Obama.

As a judge, Jeb has a reputation for being smart and fair (good qualities for a judge!). He also serves on the FISA court, which issues warrants in national security cases. While some of his rulings (releasing Hillary Clinton's emails, not releasing Donald Trump's taxes) have been wins for conservative groups, others (ie, striking down work requirements for Medicaid recipients) have gone the other way.

In school, he always kind of looked like a judge. He still does.