Judge Tacha Part 2 in Breaking the Marble Ceiling

In this second episode in Breaking the Marble Ceiling series fromTales from the 10th, host Laila Kassis sits down with Judge Deanell Tacha, whose journey from a small town in Kansas to Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is nothing short of remarkable. Judge Tacha shares stories of her early mentors, her unexpected path to law school during the Vietnam era, and her groundbreaking role as one of the few women in the legal profession at the time.

She reflects on her experiences in Washington D.C. during Watergate, her years shaping young legal minds at the University of Kansas, and the challenges and triumphs of her judicial career, including helping modernize the 10th Circuit and building strong collegial relationships on the bench. Judge Tacha also offers candid insight into balancing family, leadership, and public service, ending with reflections on her later work as Dean of Pepperdine Law.

This conversation is filled with humor, humility, and history, a vivid portrait of a woman who helped shape both the judiciary and the path for those who followed.

Transcript

Judge Tacha

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:11] Laila Kassis: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tale from the 10th. This is your host, Layla Cassis. Today I'm joined by Judge Deanell Taha. This interview is being conducted on Sunday, September 14th, 2025. It is a privilege to have you on Judge Taha.

[00:00:28] Judge Tacha: Thank you. I'm pleased to be here and thank you for the opportunity.

[00:00:32] Laila Kassis: So, tell us about your background growing up.

[00:00:36] Judge Tacha: Well, I grew up in a very small town out in Kansas. A little town of Swedish people called Scandia. It was so little that my high school class was just barely, I think 12 or 13. So I always like to say I was the top 10% of my class.

[00:00:54] Judge Tacha: That town was really very good for me because when you were, [00:01:00] in such a small school, you really did everything. You were in the band, and you were in the drama productions, and you were, in the speech classes, you did everything. So, I was fortunate that I had some really wonderful teachers that were good mentors and friends.

[00:01:16] Judge Tacha: I remember in particular; I had a third-grade teacher who spelled me through the dictionary three times. So, I still am better than spell check. She did so in part that I would spell well and in part that I would win spelling reason, and I did both. And even to this day, I correct everybody's spelling.

[00:01:37] Judge Tacha: The other teacher that I had was my eighth-grade teacher who was quite a constitutional, scholar I would say. I would really describe it as a reverence for the Constitution and for our system of government and for, the founding period generally. And so, she instilled in me what I think probably [00:02:00] inspired me to be interested in the law and interested in, all things related to the Constitution and to government. At the time, of course, I had no aspiration to be a woman lawyer. I didn't know one, never heard one, never even thought it was possible. So that came later. But certainly, that eighth grade teacher was instrumental in forming in me a real respect for the law and for the Constitution and for our government.

[00:02:29] Laila Kassis: So, what did you want to be when you grew up, when you were younger? 

[00:02:33] Judge Tacha: Well, it's, that's a hard one to answer. I suppose I thought I might be a teacher. I always was interested in politics, but again, Margaret Chase Smith was the only woman politician I knew of. I didn't know her. It was long before Nancy Kassebaum or, any of the people who served then later.

[00:02:55] Judge Tacha: But I suppose I thought I'd be a teacher, [00:03:00] but honestly, I don't remember really aspiring to any particular profession at the time. 

[00:03:08] Speaker: But you went on to attend the University of Kansas? 

[00:03:11] Judge Tacha: I did. 

[00:03:12] Laila Kassis: And what did you study? 

[00:03:13] Judge Tacha: I studied American Studies, not surprisingly, and I was fortunate that at KU I had a fabulous mentor.

[00:03:23] Judge Tacha: Her name was Emily Taylor. She was what we called then the Dean of Women. And I think she would even not mind this moniker; she could only be described as a battle ax. Before it was even the done thing, she encouraged women with talent. And I have to say she was pretty selective about who she groomed.

[00:03:46] Judge Tacha: But she groomed a group of people known as Emily's girls and begin to instill in us. Both, an understanding that we could go farther, do more than the models that we had. [00:04:00] And she always challenged us to go beyond what was comfortable or what we knew. And so, she got us all involved in student government.

[00:04:10] Judge Tacha: It was a very turbulent time on college campuses. Now, it hadn't gotten quite that turbulent when I graduated, but by 68 it was beginning to be quite turbulent. It also was, I now know the time that, um, it became possible for women to go to law school and medical school because honestly, many of the positions were empty because the men were in Vietnam. I am not arrogant enough to think that if it had not been for those, empty seats in law schools and medical schools at the time, we might not have made the progress, and I might not have been where I am. But as it was, Emily, not just encouraged, she literally forced me, to [00:05:00] think beyond college, which was not something my peers were doing.

[00:05:04] Judge Tacha: The only thing that anyone aspire to, any woman was really nursing and teaching at the time. All of us, all of Emily's girls went on to do remarkable things. That group of women, either lived together during our freshman year or became very close, and we learned a lot about how you work together with very capable women.

[00:05:33] Judge Tacha: It's one of the things that I've thought a lot about because it was not a period where women, helped each other achieve. It was a period in which women really pretty much protected the status quo. And so, the fact that Emily sort of lit fires under us to make sure that we were, well reaching our [00:06:00] potential, was remarkable at the time.

[00:06:03] Laila Kassis: So, when and why did you decide to apply to law school? 

[00:06:07] Judge Tacha: Well, I realized somewhere along in my senior, really, right before my senior year, I think it was, that I wasn't quite ready to quit school yet. I wasn't quite ready. I just loved the university, I loved my studying, and Emily was right behind me.

[00:06:29] Judge Tacha: So, I decided, well, maybe I could go on to graduate school again, never thinking of law school because it just was not a part of the models that I had. But I took the MedCAT, the GRE and the LSAT, and I did by far the best on the LSAT. Did pretty well on the GRE and terrible on the MedCAT. So, then I began to get kind of serious about it.

[00:06:56] Judge Tacha: I thought, whoa, with those scores, I might be [00:07:00] able to get into law school. But at the time my parents were very opposed, particularly my father. And it was for all the right reasons. They couldn't see a path for a woman, a woman professional at the time. So, I quietly begin to apply to law schools and lo and behold, I get in everywhere I apply, and I had had to really use my own money to apply. It didn't cost as much to apply then as it does now, but, because I didn't want anybody to know I was doing it. I was also pinned, which was the vernacular for, you're almost ready to get engaged. So, I had a pin made. I had my parents, and I didn't tell a soul. So, one night after, I'd gotten in, I realized I'd gotten in all these fabulous law schools.

[00:07:53] Judge Tacha: I called my parents and I told them I thought I'd go to law school and instead of an [00:08:00] eruption, I was kind of quiet and I hung up and I thought, well, that was easier than I thought it would be five hours later, which is exactly how long it took for my dad to drive from where they were to here to Lawrence.

[00:08:13] Judge Tacha: My house mother wakes me up and says, your fathers at the door. And he took me out and a long time tried to talk me out of this crazy decision. And from his vantage point at that time, I understand it. He simply didn't think it was going to be possible for me to succeed. He did this talking for a long time, and it was also at a very turbulent time on all college campuses.

[00:08:43] Judge Tacha: And, he had recently been to Harvard to some executive training program, and apparently wasn't very impressed by Harvard at the time. So finally, he said, well, you will go to Kansas, will you? And I said, dad, [00:09:00] you know, I've been advised that it might be smart to go somewhere besides where you did your undergrad graduate degree.

[00:09:08] Judge Tacha: Yeah, well his last ditch was, well then you will go to a state school, won't you? And I said, sure, I'll go to the University of Michigan, which turned out to be just the best possible choice for me.

[00:09:21] Tell us why that was.

[00:09:23] Judge Tacha: We women were clearly in the minority, by scores. It was a very, very, I wouldn't say welcoming, but it was an environment in which we could thrive.

[00:09:36] Judge Tacha: And the men, remarkably who were there, lot had just come back from, um, Vietnam. Some had been Freedom Riders, some had been involved in the really, really turbulent times of the Civil Rights movement. I can think of a couple of notable examples that were Freedom Riders. So, they'd been in the south, in the forefront of the civil [00:10:00] rights initiatives. But for some reason this handful of women, fit in, I mean, not precisely, but, but certainly in an environment where they helped us thrive. I now look back and wonder why that was, but I think it was a time of everybody trying to heal and a lot of turbulence going on around us.

[00:10:27] Judge Tacha: It just seemed right to treat each other pretty well, and that's what happened. In later years, we just had our 50th anniversary in later years, the men in our class have established a scholarship fund in honor of the women of that class, because I now realize that it was a very, very stunning time in my life, but I was just trying to survive.

[00:10:51] Judge Tacha: You'd walk into Room 100, which was the big classroom at Michigan, and you'd see a sea of [00:11:00] male faces. And even at KU that didn't happen because there were men and women in my classes all through KU. Probably now I realize probably more men than women, but that was just a virtual c and we got called on like everybody else.

[00:11:17] Judge Tacha: Now, sometimes the hypos, sometimes the hypos were quite sexist. And what they say about, getting called on for the rape cases absolutely true happened all the time, happened to me. And you'd have to stand up in front of all these men and describe rape or whatever, in sort of graphic detail. So that was, I now released jarring, realize it was jarring, but at the time, I guess I had an armor on, because I think I expected worse actually, after my experience with my dad and my pin mate wasn't too happy either.

[00:11:56] Judge Tacha: But I had a lot of great experiences. The University of [00:12:00] Michigan Law School was at the forefront of the admissions fights. This takes us back a long time, ultimately became the Bakke case. But it was the place where really, they tested, quotas and minority admissions generally and what to do about those if you were on admissions committees.

[00:12:18] Judge Tacha: And I was on the admissions committee at Michigan. I suppose it would've been my second or third year, I can't remember exactly. There were three student members, and the rest were faculty and administrators. One of the other student members was a black woman from Hephzibah, Georgia. And to describe what was happening, one has to think of these big hallways in the Michigan Law School with stained glass windows and very gothic sort of, statues and all kinds of, well, the electricity was out, so it was dark.

[00:12:59] Judge Tacha: [00:13:00] Protestors were lining all the halls. There'd been pipe bombs and smoke bombs and all kinds of things. So, it was dangerous. It was dangerous. I don't remember being frightened, but I do remember waking up the morning of the big meeting where we were supposed to decide on how we were going to treat admissions to the law school.

[00:13:24] Judge Tacha: And calling this black woman who was on the committee with me, who I became very good friends with actually, and telling her not to go. I thought it was just too dangerous for her, me, I was at least a white girl, you know. But, she said, Deanell, she said, if I ever stood for anything. I'm going today.

[00:13:46] Judge Tacha: So, I said, okay, meet me. I'm going to walk with you through those hallways. And we did. And I can remember that feeling. I can remember that it was dark and there were people yelling at us all the way. Nothing [00:14:00] physically happened. We went to the admissions committee meeting, and we did, I now think it was prescient, but roughly what ended up being the law of the land, which was taking into account diversity factors along with making sure people were qualified and all those things, but making sure law school classes sort of reflected society, which they had not.

[00:14:22] Judge Tacha: And to the credit of the Michigan faculty and administrators and everybody, it ended up through years of court battles, of course. But that was quite a memory. The rest of my law school career was pretty typical except I start, started doing well and applied for clerkships and didn't even get an interview, just no interviews, no nothing.

[00:14:47] Judge Tacha: I was pretty discouraged by that, and it was the first time that I had realized what the profession looked like really. But I had sort of one story that I'd always like to tell, which was [00:15:00] a very prominent Kansas City lawyer who will go a named in a very prominent Kansas City firm at the time.

[00:15:06] Judge Tacha: He did give me an interview and, I went in, and I had the interview and my record. I knew my record was at least as good as the men who were applying. And at the end of the interview, this lawyer said to me point out Deanell, you know, you have to be better than the men to get hired. Well, he had to appear before me many years later, and there was a certain sort of satisfaction in looking down and asking him a bunch of questions.

[00:15:40] Judge Tacha: That was a hard experience. I did get hired by Kansas City Law Firm for a summer clerkship between my second and third years. And I've been forever grateful to them. Thank heavens that law firm had some really great Michigan graduates in leadership positions, men, but they hired me, and [00:16:00] we're from that day on, really good mentors to me.

[00:16:03] Judge Tacha: In fact, I'll name it, it was Lindy Thompson. It no longer exists in that form, but it was a great law firm, and they hired me. It was Lindy Thompson, van Dyke and Langworthy.

[00:16:16] Judge Tacha: So then what do I do then if I don't get a clerkship? I could have gone, back to Kansas City, at least to that firm and maybe to some others by then.

[00:16:27] Yes. So, what did you do after law school?

[00:16:31] Judge Tacha: one of my faculty members I went to and said, well, doesn't look like I'm going to get a clerkship. What do you think? He said, no. He said, I think the right thing for you, apply for the White House Fellows Program and the White House Fellows Program not the White House Indus, but White House Fellows.

[00:16:48] Judge Tacha: You are paired with a cabinet member and I went to Washington and you do kind of mutual interviews and everything, and my last two choices were between, between the [00:17:00] Secretary of Labor and John Dean and when only has to think what was going on during that time, I chose the Secretary of Labor and it turned out to be a very wise choice because a lot of great young lawyers were working with John Dean and in the White House, and really got caught up then later in the Watergate scandals, and I wasn't at all.

[00:17:23] Judge Tacha: Instead, I'm working for what turned out to be one of the most active of the old line. Agencies because we did manpower programs, we did occupational safety and health. We did Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Women's Bureau. And the day I got to the labor department; I get a call from the undersecretary.

[00:17:45] Judge Tacha: I'm sitting in this brand-new little office on the cabinet floor, and they say the undersecretary wants to talk to you. So, I go in and it was Larry Silverman, Lawrence Silverman, who after I [00:18:00] end up on the 10th circuit, he ended up on the DC circuit. And it was roughly the same time period. I don't remember exactly, but at the time he was under Secretary of Labor, and he asked me a bunch of hard questions and he clearly was grilling me.

[00:18:14] Judge Tacha: Well, I learned later, of course but he was looking for an executive assistant because Susan had just quit. And at the end of this interview, he said to me, you know, I can tell you're very smart, but if you don't start putting the Gs on the end of your words, nobody's ever going to know it. Well, I worked for him for a long time.

[00:18:35] Judge Tacha: And then, at the end of my, what would've been the end of my White House fellows year, I was asked to stay on by the Nixon administration, through the election of 72 because Julie Nixon Eisenhower, was very interested in manpower programs, which I really don't like the word anymore, but, they were job training programs for, especially youth, but they were also for mid-career people, some of [00:19:00] them, to train people or retrain them as the case may be into jobs that were productive and paid and that kind of thing.

[00:19:08] Judge Tacha: And so, I did a fair amount of background work in the manpower area and worked actually directly for this, undersecretary for manpower, for that whole period and really had a chance to really kind of get to know the folks, especially in Julie Nixon became Eisenhower, in her work and she did some very productive work, in labor related issues. I got amazing experience because the secretary and the president invoked the Taft Hartley Act in the doc strikes, and I was right in the middle of all that and got to work a lot with that. Got to work a lot with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then Bill, who was a giant in mediation and conciliation, worked with him.

[00:19:58] Judge Tacha: I just was so fortunate [00:20:00] because the people that were at the labor department at the time, George Schultz had just finished as secretary and Jim Hudson came in. So, these were all giants, in that period. So, it, turned out to be a wonderful experience. Then after the ‘72 election. I'll never forget the night of the ‘72 election because my mother called me and she said, oh, that must be the most exciting place to be.

[00:20:23] Judge Tacha: I said, mother, this is the Deadest place on the face of the earth on election night. They finally figure out where the power is and it's not Washington. But then I had a chance, well they wanted me to stay on in the Nixon administration and lucky choices all the way along. But I had by then had opportunities to go to really big law firms in Washington and New York and decided it was time to do that.

[00:20:50] Judge Tacha: So, I went to Hogan and Harts what was then Hogan and Hartson, had some wonderful mentors there. The people know to this day [00:21:00] actually Barrett Prettyman's father's name is on the DC Circuit Courthouse. I got to work with some really, really outstanding people. But all this time I've been dating sort of, uh, this high school basketball coach in Concordia, Kansas.

[00:21:17] Judge Tacha: Concordia is a town of about 6,000 people. They, of course, had never seen a woman lawyer, and John was not about to come to Washington. That just was not his thing. So, if I was going to marry this guy, I was going to have to go back to Concordia. And that's when I kind of started applying a life lesson that I've always applied, which is get your priorities straight, and know them every time they come along. And they may be every day, every hour, certainly for a lifetime. And follow up. And don't you veer away from them, so you know what they are, and you'll know at the right time which priority takes priority. [00:22:00] Well, at that time it was, I loved this guy, and I knew he was the right one for me. And I knew the lifestyle that we had or that we would have would be the kind of lifestyle I wanted.

[00:22:13] Judge Tacha: I did not want to kind of fancy city lifestyle, and I wanted quite a few kids, which I ended up with. So, I sent him a, in that day you could send a singing telegram in his high school math class, and it said yes, September 2nd, and I left Hogan and Hartson thought I had given up my career forever. Went back to Concordia, Kansas., Went back and no one would hire me. Of course, I mean, it this oddity oddity and its sort of interesting because after my first year in law school, I volunteered at a little four-man law firm and I thought they'd hire me., It just didn't occur to me they wouldn't, because I would've brought in some business and, well, [00:23:00] they didn't.

[00:23:00] Judge Tacha: I was office share with another very generous lawyer. To give him his credit, his name was Tom Pitner, and he let me off a share. And I did everything that would come my way because I had to. But of course, they had never seen a woman lawyer. But I learned a wonderful lesson in mentoring from the local judge there.

[00:23:22] Judge Tacha: He was an elderly, very, very calm and thoughtful guy. About my stature. Small guy. Well, I had, one of my first cases in court was a divorce case, and I had prepared, I mean, I prepared like a securities lawyer when to go to the New York, the second Circuit or something. And I knew everything about this case and about my client.

[00:23:49] Judge Tacha: So, I go into court. And I ask all these questions, and we do everything. At the end of my examination, this wonderful judge just looked up quietly and said, counsel, you may [00:24:00] wish to ask her where she lives, which of course, in divorce case, domiciles, everything. So, he taught me a lesson in how you mentor without embarrassing me at all.

[00:24:12] Judge Tacha: My client didn't know nobody, really, nobody in the courtroom knew that he had kind of corrected me. So, it was a really good lesson of you teach quietly and you teach by example, and you don't sort of rub folks' faces in their mistakes. And it was a wonderful experience. Then at semester time that year, KU found out I was around, I guess, and

[00:24:36] Judge Tacha: I was asked to come teach, I think I taught one course, it might have been two courses, in the spring semester of that year. So, it was from September to December I taught., I drove from Concordia to Lawrence once a week to teach these classes and then drove back that night. And by this time, I'm pregnant.

[00:24:58] Judge Tacha: So, it [00:25:00] was a haul. Well then, I got the chance to come on the faculty and John and I had also made the decision that we would take turns making the big decisions. You just can't talk some of those out. You just have to have a bright line. And our bright line was we take turns making the big decisions.

[00:25:19] Judge Tacha: And it was my turn because I'd come back. We moved to Lawrence. Our baby our oldest child was born in July of that year. I started teaching mid-August. John doesn't have a job. He ultimately found one and worked actually in it for almost 40 years. It, it was a lecture, it used to be part of KU, part of Extension, and it was live programming in schools’ assembly programs like 40-minute assembly programs. And KU spun it off at the time because they didn't think you should make a profit from the university. Now that's hilarious. So [00:26:00] John ran that business and the man who owned it died two months later. So, we have a new job, both of us.

[00:26:08] Judge Tacha: A new baby moved into a new house, in a new town. But I loved teaching and, I loved Lawrence. Of course, I knew I loved Lawrence. And John came to love it too. So, then we were here in teaching and, I came as a director of the Legal Aid Clinic, and I must say I was the second woman on the Kansas Law School faculty as I was the second woman frequently then later.

[00:26:34] Judge Tacha: And I've always said it's one of the best things that ever happened to me because women, sort of, one woman in each instance sort of forged away for me and Louise. She was Louise Wheeler, and then Lamont, was a very gifted lawyer. But she left and I took her position as director of the Legal Aid Clinic, and that was just a wonderful experience. because I was really practicing law, with [00:27:00] student interns and, it was great. I have many, many great stories. We had one case that went all the way to the Supreme Court with, a very, very gifted athlete, cliff Wiley, who was a runner. And this now sounds so antiquated, but at the time, this is a little bit of history that shouldn't be forgotten. At that time a gifted athlete could not take both his athletic scholarship and the BEOG, which is the basic educational opportunity grant for students who have no money. And Cliff had no money, he had lots of tennis shoes, but he had no, he gave, gave us tennis shoes frequently. Not fancy ones like they have now, but he came into the legal aid clinic one day.

[00:27:49] Judge Tacha: I'll never forget it said, you know, this just doesn't seem fair. The rich kids can keep their athletic scholarships and [00:28:00] get paid by their parents, but I don't have any money. And so, I get A-B-E-O-G because I don't have any money, and I can't keep my athletic scholarship. Now in the phase of what's happened since that's, that's laughable if it weren't so serious.

[00:28:18] Judge Tacha: And we took that all the way to the Supreme Court and there were many procedural vagaries along the way, but it went through the 10th circuit, and we had then some lawyers. But I had an intern, a student intern that carried that the whole way. It was amazing. The other one I remember clearly, and this was, it still kind of warms my heart.

[00:28:40] Judge Tacha: A woman in Lawrence had been married to a person from a different country, had two children, and the man, the husband picks the kids up from school one afternoon and flies them to who knew where in the world. And she comes [00:29:00] in, of course, distraught. And she had no money, but she'd lost her kids, and she didn't know where they were.

[00:29:08] Judge Tacha: And it was before you could trace people and all this stuff we can do now. Well, this is a very long story, but to make this long story short, through her church, we found the whereabouts of the kids after they'd been in several countries.

[00:29:27] Laila Kassis: Oh, wow.

[00:29:28] Judge Tacha: And they were in London. And the London legal Aid took it on and a very senior barrister in London took it as a case.

[00:29:38] Judge Tacha: He flew to Lawrence. I entertained him at dinner and found out all about the case. We got custody of the kids. He got custody of the kids.

[00:29:49] Judge Tacha: I can't remember exactly what all we filed. It was an international law. It was crazy. But we had this very senior barrister suddenly out of [00:30:00] nowhere, you know that helped us. So, on Christmas Eve, I'll never forget it, the mother had never flown, let alone flown to the united ca Well it was England at the time.

[00:30:11] Judge Tacha: My interns, I'll never forget this, bring little gifts to the legal aid office for her to put in her bag, and then she takes off on Christmas Eve, flies to London and brings the kids back. 

[00:30:26] Laila Kassis: Oh, wow. 

[00:30:27] Judge Tacha: For years now, I haven't recently for years I got a Christmas thank you from those kids. 

[00:30:33] Laila Kassis: That's wonderful.

[00:30:34] Judge Tacha: So that was one of the legal aid stories. But anyway, I digressed. So, then I taught for several years. I taught oil and gas, I taught property, I taught administrative law. I got oil and gas the night before the class was supposed to start because I guess we lost a faculty. I don't remember how that happened.

[00:30:56] Judge Tacha: But anyway, the dean calls me and says, you can teach [00:31:00] property. You can teach oil and gas. I got saved because the guru of oil and gas law was, at the University of Oklahoma. And I called him. It was before you could do anything on computers, I called him and I said, I am in trouble. Help me out.

[00:31:14] Judge Tacha: Well, to his great credit, he sent me all his, I used his textbook, sent me all his notes, sent me all his, exams, sent me his hypos, so it bailed me out and I ended up loving it. It was interesting. And so, it was good experience. Then I went on to central administration and I did, associate Vice Chancellor.

[00:31:38] Judge Tacha: Well, I was associate Dean of law school, I moved the law school from Old Green Hall, which is up on Jayhawk Boulevard to what was then the new building, which is now very old, down by the field house. The funny part about that, that ended up helping me enormously in my court administration was I had to decide how we decided who [00:32:00] got what office.

[00:32:01] Judge Tacha: Of course it would always be by seniority, but that wasn't necessarily true because some of our younger faculty were among our most productive. So, it was a big discussion. Well, I ended up doing it totally by seniority, but everybody had to be in their offices at a given 15 minutes or whatever, because if you got passed over, you got passed over and then you went on.

[00:32:28] Judge Tacha: Well that ended up when we moved to the new courthouse being the best experience I ever had, because we had to do the same thing.

[00:32:36] Laila Kassis: Oh wow.

[00:32:37] Judge Tacha: In the new courthouse. So, I had a lot of good experience along the way that who knew, was going to be good experience. And then I went up to Strong Hall and I ultimately became Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

[00:32:49] Judge Tacha: And there it was again, a great experience, a great university. And I'll never forget, there had never been a woman by Chancellor, let alone a [00:33:00] 34-year-old lawyer. So, some of the really great scholars were going, what has happened here? But I ended up with a really strong relationship with the distinguished professors and we started the University Scholars Program, which now is flourishing, I'm happy to say. A lot of good experiences from that. But then one day I get this phone call, in the midst of this, of course I'm getting pretty good nibbles about going off to be president of other universities.

[00:33:34] Judge Tacha: So, I go home one night after I'd been called by a search committee that I was really interested in. I went home and John said, look around you. We've got four kids. I've got a business. It's my turn. We're staying in Lawrence. So, I politely told everyone again, you know, he got to make the decision. It was a clear, bright line, and that [00:34:00] was fine.

[00:34:01] Judge Tacha: I thought, well, I've given up all my chances.

[00:34:03] But it sounds like that wasn't the case.

[00:34:06] Judge Tacha: Uh, and then I get the call from Bob Dole and Bob Dole calls me and says, Deanell, we have a new position in the 10th circuit, and I want you to take it.

[00:34:17] Judge Tacha: Well, first I was pregnant with my fourth child. I knew two men who were by far my senior, both of whom, who were wonderful candidates, wonderful people, that I respected greatly wanted this job really bad.

[00:34:38] Judge Tacha: So, I kept saying, Bob, no, no. He kept calling back. And finally, I said. If you can prove to me that neither one of those fellas is going to get this job, then I'll put my name in the hat. Five minutes later, one of the top lawyers in the United States [00:35:00] government called me and said that neither one of those guys is going to get it.

[00:35:04] Judge Tacha: So, then the rest is history. I had to put my name in, and still, I didn't think I'd get it. I mean, still I was going, Bob Dole, you're, you know, but Stephanie Seymour was already on the court, so there was one woman already there. Fast forward I didn't even think I'd be selective, but we were on vacation in Rocky Mountain National Park with all four children up in the mountains, in just our hiking gear.

[00:35:33] Judge Tacha: And the Ranger comes up and he checks to be sure I am who I say I am. He said the White House is called and you are expected in Washington on Monday morning, this Friday afternoon. You're expected in Washington on Monday morning. Well, needless to say, I had no clothes. I didn't know anything about constitutional law the up-to-date stuff.

[00:35:56] Judge Tacha: So, we all tripped back to the Denver [00:36:00] airport. John had the kids in the van. I took the airplane and came back to Lawrence to get clothes. And then a very senior faculty member who was a great constitutional scholar, Francis Heller, spent a whole Sunday afternoon going over all the recent Supreme Court cases.

[00:36:20] Judge Tacha: Kind of getting me up to speed with what was going on in legal jurisprudence. And then Supreme, especially Supreme Court jurisprudence and what was going through the courts of appeals. So, then I fly to Washington on Monday morning and have my meetings at the Justice Department and then, got confirmed and it's a sort of a cute tense circuit story.

[00:36:44] Judge Tacha: I got confirmed. Bobby Baldock and I, and a whole group of other people got confirmed roughly the same day, I think. But I came to realize that it's not the day your vote on your [00:37:00] confirmation that determines your seniority. It's the day your commission is signed. And lo and behold, I get to the court and I'm one day senior to Judge Baldock.

[00:37:13] Judge Tacha: And I looked at it and I went, no, that can't be right 10 years is junior for heaven's sakes. Sure enough. So, I, to this day, don't know how that happened, except pretty clear to me bob Dole got somewhere and shoved it in there somewhere. So, I was able to be chief and I was always senior to Judge Paul Dock, which always struck me as hilarious.

[00:37:35] Judge Tacha: Our birthday's, his birthday is January 24th, and mine's January 26th. So, we're 10 years apart almost to the day. But I always preceded him in seniority. So, then I go to the court and that's where I was so fortunate again to be the second woman because Judge Seymour and I had so much in common.

[00:37:57] Judge Tacha: Of course, we were both Midwesterners, but [00:38:00] more to the point, we both had four children. I had a tiny baby at the time. We both had been through some of the struggles of trying to get through the glass ceiling. We both had a lot of war stories to tell. She was so welcoming and had been such a force, for good on the court and had, forged such strong relationships with the other judges that when I came it didn't seem odd at all.

[00:38:29] Judge Tacha: The men immediately treated me just like they treated her and like they treated each other, with utmost respect, very collegially, listened to me when I had them do crazy things. Still to this day, they're the best colleagues I ever had anywhere. Just a remarkable group of people and appointed by several administrations, not one side of the aisle or the other.

[00:38:56] Judge Tacha: And very accustomed [00:39:00] to trying to work it out in the court without sort of airing public disputes. As you may have noted, the 10th circuit has a very low in bank percentage, and I really believe that that is because of this, let's try to get this ironed out in the court before it ever hits the public.

[00:39:23] Judge Tacha: Our opinions were all circulated, among the entire court. Often judges not on the panel would weigh in with some good suggestions or argue with us or whatever it was. And it always made our work better. I never knew anybody to take, you know, sort of get insulted or anything. One of my favorite stories is Judge McKay.

[00:39:45] Judge Tacha: Now, judge McKay and I, if anybody had asked, would've thought we were very far on opposite ends of whatever spectrum there was. But we actually agreed more than we disagreed. But one time [00:40:00] we were on a case, and we disagreed vehemently over what the outcome should be. And that was before, again, we were doing things on computers.

[00:40:10] Judge Tacha: So, as he always did, he called me up and he said, Deanell, I want you to look at this, this and this, facts and a law, whatever. So, he kept me on the line, and he said, now go to page whatever, boom, whatever in the record. And well, I got quiet, and I read this stuff and then I reread my opinion, and I reread, well, I got back on the phone, and I said, Monroe, you're right.

[00:40:40] Judge Tacha: And he threw, I mean, I could just hear him Del, thank the Lord you are reasonable. Uh, so it, but that was emblematic of how everybody treated each other. So that was a wonderful experience. One of the other things that folks mentioned when they mentioned my [00:41:00] work on the court was I was an administrator at heart.

[00:41:03] Judge Tacha: And I get to the court, and we are last or nearly last in the circuits in time to disposition, which means time the case is filed to the time it's decided, and there were thousands of cases in our backlog. I couldn't stand it. It was driving me crazy. And this is within my first year on the court. Now it takes a little, uh, take these guys on.

[00:41:27] Judge Tacha: But we were at a retreat, and I said, well, why don't we just go to Denver, put all those, they were paper files. It's done, paper files on trolleys, divide up in three judge panels, and let's go through the whole caseload and let's put them in categories. Some for arguments, some can be done by the staff attorneys.

[00:41:47] Judge Tacha: Some we can do right here. We can dictate we were dictating in those days. We can dictate the order. It circulated. Well to make a long story short, they called it hell week [00:42:00] and we in one week cut our time to disposition and got to where I think we still are, one of the fastest circuits because we now have this very effective screening process where the judges are involved at all stages, but you have different categories of disposition and, it was amazing.

[00:42:22] Judge Tacha: Now, it was also at that time to be fair, that there was a giant explosion of federal case law. It's one of the things I look back on my career and I, I think about, which is when I came on the bench, there were only a handful of federal, crimes. But in 19, I think it was 86 or seven, several things converged, CNN came on the picture, USA today, and there was carjacking in.

[00:42:56] Judge Tacha: And that carjacking because of the national [00:43:00] news media became a national scare. And so, we as a nation, and I understand that the federal lawmakers also saw the federal implications of this, all of a sudden began to create federal crimes, to the point where now today, I don't know, there are hundreds of federal crimes.

[00:43:23] Judge Tacha: So, the federal just criminal caseload and habeas caseload was just exploding at that time. So, it's a good thing we did what we did, or we'd have been awash in cases. That's one of the things that I still take great pride in. I didn't do it. I had the sort of temerity to say to the rest of the group, hey, we’ve got to take care of this mess.

[00:43:47] Judge Tacha: It was good for the litigants, it was good for the courts, and apparently, it's survived and, passed the test of time. And then I became chief and that was, I think, the best job of [00:44:00] my life. I loved it. I loved the combination of the administrative issues with the judicial issues. We had some really tough things happen during that time.

[00:44:11] Judge Tacha: And chief judges get the brunt of judicial discipline and all of the issues that just happened in the courts.

[00:44:19] Laila Kassis: Yeah. For. Just the average listener, what does a, a chief judge do? What is their responsibilities? 

[00:44:25] Judge Tacha: Well, that's a good question. Of course, the ceremonial thing is you preside over everything

[00:44:30] Judge Tacha: but more importantly, you are responsible for the entire staff. People often don't see behind the judges, there's a library and there are staff attorneys and there are parole officers, and there are federal public defenders, and they're all over the circuit. So, you're the chief administrative officer of all those.

[00:44:50] Judge Tacha: And things happen like they do in any organization, a lot of employment issues, a lot of, just general administration of [00:45:00] justice issues. One of the issues I had to deal with and everybody in the nation did was we were just so short on federal public defenders when this big explosion of federal case law happened.

[00:45:11] Judge Tacha: And we, along with everyone in the nation had to really grapple with that problem. And there wasn't money in the federal budget for as many FPDs as we needed. And then the other thing that started happening, and now we're seeing it even more, all the security issues that, and you know, during that time we had the Oklahoma City bombing.

[00:45:33] Judge Tacha: Well, not during, I wasn't chief during that, but that's an example of the kind of thing that goes on. And I'm actually thinking about my colleagues in Utah right now. That'll be a 10th circuit issue., There's all that administration of justice. There's also, the chief judge is the one responsible for judicial discipline.

[00:45:53] Judge Tacha: And you do not ignore them. You must do something. And I can't talk about those, but I had a number [00:46:00] of cases. Where I had to work with judges on very serious judicial discipline issues. Even that is kind of a lesson in human nature and a good lesson for anybody who has to deal with anybody.

[00:46:14] Judge Tacha: If you can deal with a judge, then your 5-year-old is in trouble because, I enjoyed that. And then the other thing I enjoyed was, one of the great things about our surgery was all the Native American, the Indian reservations and Native American law generally. And I made it my, just one thing I did was do a lot of work with the tribal judges and with, sort of bringing the level of, lower court, determinations and training and all of that, up.

[00:46:48] Judge Tacha: And you're able to do some of those things when you're chief, you know. Say, let's do this, you do it. That I liked, I loved being on the judicial conference of the United [00:47:00] States, which is all the chief judges. And then I talked about this before, but then I was very privileged. I served as two terms, as the chair of the committee on the judicial branch appointed by the Chief Justice, and that is the committee of the conference that does all the inner branch relationships among the congress, the Justice Department, and the judiciary.

[00:47:28] Judge Tacha: And so that was a wonderful experience. Challenging, I might say. But I'll tell you, in those days, we got together, we had a retreat every year with the leaders of the Congress, the leaders in the Justice Department and the judges. We would be so well served if we could still do that. It doesn't happen anymore.

[00:47:49] Judge Tacha: For whatever reasons, things have gotten way too divided to do that, but in those days, we were able to solve a lot of problems. I also [00:48:00] worked with a project that is still ongoing, with Judge Frank Coffin of, the first circuit., We put together a system where if a judge is looking at a case and you see that the statute just needs to be fixed, it's not policy much, it's just needs fixed.

[00:48:18] Judge Tacha: Might be a statute of limitations, it might be. So, we, developed a system for inserting in opinions a note to Congress about, and it still exists. It's still very much a part of the annotated. I mean, I, you could probably find out they do it. I don't know exactly, so that was fun too. Then I got appointed to the United States Sentencing Commission, and I was on that for a lot of years.

[00:48:42] Judge Tacha: There I had the great privilege of working with Justice Breyer, who'd been one of the authors of the sentencing, guidelines. And we were working, especially at that time with the gradations, it's hard to describe, but in the table, for the sentences [00:49:00] we were looking, particularly at drug sentences because there was a feeling out among the judges, and I think this is a fair characterization, that some of them were way too harsh for low amounts.

[00:49:13] Judge Tacha: And then we were faced with the veritable crack cocaine problem where the punishment for crack was just astonishingly high, compared to powder for heaven's sakes and powder. I mean, I learned more than I needed to know. And powder was very deadly too. But we were punishing crack defendants, very seriously.

[00:49:42] Judge Tacha: So, the commission had to deal with that. Now, it was one of the harder periods in my life because I was used to a very collegial group that made their decisions together. The sentencing commission was all three branches of government, and so it had representatives of Congress, representatives [00:50:00] of the Justice Department, and judges, and of course, the other two branches are responsible to the folks out there.

[00:50:07] Judge Tacha: And so, there were a lot of political considerations. Which the judges didn't feel very much. So, when it came time to issue our guidelines, our crack cocaine guidelines, just in an astonishing move, the commission took the sentences from a hundred to one, to one to one all at once. I descended. And you'll find it's the only descent ever up to that point, at least.

[00:50:36] Judge Tacha: There may be some recently that I don't even know what they're doing right now, but I descended because I thought it was too far. You go from a hundred to one, there's a whole bunch of criminal activity in there, in the middle and danger to the public and all those things. Well, the chair of the sentencing committee, rest his soul did not like it that there was a [00:51:00] dissent.

[00:51:00] Judge Tacha: And he let me know and not so calm away, but I was used to being a judge and if I didn't like it, then I wrote a dissent. And so that dissent still stands, and I still get letters and things that say, you know, thanks for at least thinking about it. Now they've moved on and the sentencing guidelines are, I don't know how they are these days, but in those days, there were lots of questions about the good guidelines.

[00:51:28] Judge Tacha: I worry now about security issues, which I had to worry terribly about when I was on the bench or when I was chief. We had one totally benign and really kind of hilarious. Uh, example, but it makes me feel, for these judges, I was under a death threat. Everybody's always under threats at some time or another, and often many of them, well, I was under a death threat and somehow this defendant had escaped his jail and so they put a 24-hour marshal on [00:52:00] duty on me.

[00:52:01] Laila Kassis: Oh, wow. 

[00:52:02] Judge Tacha: And it was Christmas Eve. And so, I said to the, to the head marshal, yes, I do want the protection, but don't let him ring the doorbell between shifts. Sure enough, a brand-new Young Marshall at midnight on Christmas Eve rings the doorbell. Four little kids think it's Santa Claus and they're all at the door.

[00:52:25] Judge Tacha: And here's this young Marshall, oh no. So that was my totally benign but kind of humorous example. And so, the kids were up all-night waiting for Santa Claus. John and I were exhausted, but security is a serious issue. And now even more serious, because I was just told this last week that this year I think there have been like 432 credible threats against federal judges. [00:53:00] 

[00:53:00] Judge Tacha: Now it doesn't change the outcome for those judges. The judges are going to do what they're going to do, but it makes a public think that's okay or think that the judge makes his or her decision on that. It's a terrible state of affairs. Anyway.

[00:53:15] Laila Kassis: What was the most difficult case for you to work on?

[00:53:18] Judge Tacha: Well, always, I think any judge would say a death penalty case. And that's as it should be. Liberty's one thing, property's another thing. Life, that's a grave responsibility. I always took those so seriously. And we did I think probably two or three times more work on a death case and on anything.

[00:53:41] Judge Tacha: And one of my law clerks once had to read through every single death penalty opinion from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, because the question was whether they'd consistently, applied the standards for the death penalty. That poor law clerk, I don't know if he's ever recovered, but so though [00:54:00] that was hard.

[00:54:00] Judge Tacha: Our caseload was so interesting because if you think through the years of my years on the bench, we went through energy regulation and deregulation. So, we had FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and all of their pipeline issues and pricing issues and just all of the permutations of those. So, I found that's where my oil and gas probably came in useful. I found those really interesting. Others did not think they were as interesting as I did. And then I love just the geography of the 10th circuit because I think it's the case that two thirds of the land is in public lands.

[00:54:42] Judge Tacha: If you add Indian reservations, national parks, military establishments, so we had an awful lot of federal land questions. Some of them were environmental, some of them were all kinds of regulatory questions and then the normal [00:55:00] things that happened on like basis, military basis. And then of course, I've already mentioned the tribal courts, which I always found very interesting.

[00:55:08] Judge Tacha: We had a one case that I remember quite clearly where there was quite a checkerboard, I think it was in New Mexico between federal law enforcement and tribal law enforcement. And you'd go from one patch of ground to the next patch of ground, and it was the sheriff here and then it was the, tribal, law enforcement people.

[00:55:30] Judge Tacha: And we had to decide, and I think that went to the Supreme Court actually. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember looking at those maps of the checkerboard of authority, which was really hard for everybody who was affected by it. I think they finally got that ironed out, but I'm not sure about that.

[00:55:49] Judge Tacha: So, I found that interesting. Of course, all the, various wildlife and, flora and fauna and everything of the national parks. I've always said, I think I know more [00:56:00] about gray wolves than the biologists probably do because you had to read all those records about whether the gray wolves were eating the cattle and the cattle.

[00:56:08] Judge Tacha: There's that great song in one of the musicals about the ranchers and the wildlife. Whoa. It's true.

[00:56:17] Judge Tacha: Well, I have a few funny cases. A couple that come to mind. One was, these women in a little town in New Mexico, which I don't remember, started making jeans for fat ladies.

[00:56:30] Judge Tacha: And they called them Lardache and Jordache, which was at the time the big fancy jeans manufacturer, had little horses that peaked over the back pocket of the jeans. They were quite diminutive and very controlled. Well, the pigs were pink, felt pigs. Well, Jorcache sued Lardache for a trademark infringement and the test for trademark [00:57:00] infringement is likelihood of confusion.

[00:57:02] Judge Tacha: We held, of course, there is no likelihood of confusion., I think it fair to say that Kardash probably didn't care 'cause it wasn't a big economic detriment, but the genes became very famous. I think actually in the federal reporter, we may have put a picture of it in, I think it may be, and I can't remember whether we did that or not.

[00:57:24] Judge Tacha: We certainly talked about it. But anyway, now I will reveal that those jeans that were in the record got worn to a 10th circuit party by some judge who fit in the fat lady jeans, and it might have been me. And I'm told though, I have nothing to verify this, I'm told that those same genes George then asked for out of the record and went in their museum in New York, but I, I don't know that that's true.

[00:57:56] Judge Tacha: So, so that was one, another was [00:58:00] another trademark case. Those are funny because people are really just trying to protect their marks. But these were baseball cards, and it's called cartoons, and I can't remember who the other party was. But anyway, they made fun of baseball players. So instead of those really handsome looking baseball cards. They were these caricatures of baseball players. And, that one I know made it into textbooks. I think both of those actually made it into textbooks, , just because they're funny and they're entertaining. But those were two funny, there aren't very many opportunities for humor and opinions.

[00:58:36] Judge Tacha: But I do remember those two. 

[00:58:39] Laila Kassis: Did you have any cases that you were on the panel on that went up to the Supreme Court, and if so, what was the outcome? 

[00:58:46] Judge Tacha: Oh, yes. Well, the one I remember the best, luckily, I don't remember the name, but I remember the best, was kind of a procedural case. But the majority in the Supreme Court took my descent and, in the opinion, [00:59:00] said Judge Taha was right.

[00:59:02] Judge Tacha: Oh, it was like a day, a big day for me. So that one, again, I don't remember the name of it, but, that one I did get reversed on the basis of my dissent, which was very gratifying actually. And I have so few dissents out there. I bet you could, I bet it's under 20. I don't know. I've never counted it.

[00:59:24] Judge Tacha: Oh, I know. It's under 20. Because I always work very hard to get consensus and sometimes change some things. Others went up. I think I got reversed in one big procedural case of, I really don't remember. Not many of mine went up. A few, at least that I was on the panel. You know as it goes statistically, I'm not sure this is true, but I don't think the 10th Circuit has that many.

[00:59:51] Judge Tacha: They have several in Indian law because that tends to be a, not litigated in other parts of the world very much. But our record at [01:00:00] the court has been, at least at that time, it had been pretty good. So, I don't know what it's now. 

[01:00:07] Laila Kassis: And did you have a mentor when you first started on the court? 

[01:00:10] Judge Tacha: Oh, yes.

[01:00:11] Judge Tacha: It was Judge Seymour. And it was really more by example. It wasn't like she took me in her hand or anything, but her example of a very smart, very capable, very respected woman, just made my life so much easier. And when I kind of run into some buzz saws that I wasn't sure about, I'd go talk to her.

[01:00:34] Judge Tacha: And she was always the voice of wisdom. And restrained. I think for both of us, you need to know there was a time when, well, being a feminist was not always a complimentary term, but we never got treated that way. We always got treated with respect, and I know it was because of her examples. So, she would've been a [01:01:00] mentor on the court.

[01:01:01] Judge Tacha: Another one, and one that stays with me for my life, was Judge Oliver Seth, who was a former chief judge of the circuit, a formidable man, a very tall, very big, I mean, of course I think everyone is tall and big, he was a man of great stature and very respected kind of Mr. New Mexico. He was, George O'Keefe's lawyer, and I mean, it just,

[01:01:26] Laila Kassis: oh wow.

[01:01:26] Judge Tacha: He was, and his wife opened the first art gallery in Santa Fe, so he was literally Mr. New Mexico. But he'd been on the court many years when I came on and was then reasonably elderly. One day we were sitting in Santa Fe and he called me aside and he said, would you come up to my chambers after you've done your cases?

[01:01:47] Judge Tacha: So, I did. And it was a little intimidating because I was pretty new and young, and he was the sort of all-star. And he sat me down and he said something [01:02:00] to the effect of, you're young and you're going to be in this court for a very long time. And how you work and how you behave and how you work with the rest of the court, it's going to be really important.

[01:02:13] Judge Tacha: Then he talked to me about the circuit and how important these states have been to the development of the nation and how the law has developed, really, in part because of our location and how the diversity, for example of religions in the circuit was important. And he talked about the role of a judge.

[01:02:35] Judge Tacha: He said being a judge, not just in the circuit, but certainly in the circuit is being an example of the kind of people who opened up the west. They were honest, they tried to be hardworking, didn't take themselves too seriously, tried to sort of live humbly. His advice to me was, [01:03:00] always remember that this court signifies those qualities and characteristics and that you're partially responsible for carrying that legacy on.

[01:03:11] Judge Tacha: And that stayed with me forever. Now I always thought it was really remarkable that he called me in, because it could have been any of the men and whatever. But in later years I realized he had two daughters that were not shy and retiring and, he probably learned a lot from them too. So those two were real mentors.

[01:03:33] Judge Tacha: And then Judge Baldock and I were just buddies the whole way., I'll never forget a very funny occasion right after I came on the court. As I said, our birthdays are in January and so was Judge Anderson's. So naturally I am every night dragging to watch Kansas basketball game somewhere. And one night right after I came on the court, at that time, we always had cocktails together in the evening.

[01:03:59] Judge Tacha: So, we [01:04:00] always had a chance to visit together and everybody came. I think that's no longer quite the case, but, in those days. , I wouldn't have missed it for the, anyway, we're all together and of course I'm over there talking about Kansas basketball, North Carolina, who are the big powerhouses this year?

[01:04:16] Judge Tacha: Who are the great players? And I look over at Poor Judge Seymour has sat down and she has this look in her eyes, like, how did this happen? She, she said, she looked up at all of us and said, I thought when I got another woman on this court, we wouldn't be talking about sports all the time. So that was, it was a great time.

[01:04:42] Judge Tacha: And then of course, I drug them all the time to watch KU basketball, because it was winter and we did that., Then of course, we, took over, well, we needed a new courthouse. When I started on the court, judge Baldock and I both had literally broom [01:05:00] closets in the old office building.

[01:05:02] Judge Tacha: Federal office building and, it just wasn't the most pleasant circumstance in the world. So, and we knew that the 10th Circuit had originally been in that old, now the, the post office or what was in the post office, but we couldn't quite figure out how to get ourselves back there. And the postal service kept saying, no, no, no, we need this downtown post office.

[01:05:23] Judge Tacha: We’ve got to have it. Well, judge Anderson calls me one morning and he says, he woke me up? I remember because real early, he said, do you know what they're doing in Washington? He said, they're working on a continuing resolution. Do you know what they do in continuing resolutions? Well, everything they can't do when they have regular legislation.

[01:05:46] Judge Tacha: And he said, you know who we have? We have Dole, we have Dimanche, we have Simpson, we have B. We have, I mean, we did all the, and Pat Schroeder from Colorado was [01:06:00] the head of the postal committee. Well, the lights start going on in my eyes, and to make a long story short, judge Seymour, judge Anderson, judge Lio and I, I think that was the group.

[01:06:14] Judge Tacha: Judge Baldock might have gone on that too. Anyway, we go to Washington that very day. We sit down by late afternoon. We have a big, long conference table with Pat Schroder was there. I remember mostly it was the aas or the staff folks for these senators, although they, most of them dropped by. They wanted to be part of this, and we told them we have to have that building back.

[01:06:41] Judge Tacha: Well, they went, sure, why not? You know, why wouldn't we? Well, and judges are pretty good at writing legislation, so, by the next day or two, we had written the legislation, gotten it into the continuing resolution, gotten our courthouse back, and we put in the language restored to its [01:07:00] historic elegance out of already appropriated funds.

[01:07:03] Judge Tacha: So, they didn't have to even go to the appropriations committees. They, they did it all in one fell swoop. And then we flew back to Denver, and we had to meet with the postmaster in Denver who didn't even know this was all going on. And we say, we own your building. And oh, bless his heart, as it turned out, they knew they needed a facility out by the airport and.

[01:07:34] Judge Tacha: They, they wanted that old, they loved that old facility. And we made the promise, as you'll see, to leave some of those, mailboxes in the post office. And then we had a great architect that helped us restore the building. In fact, the other day when I was in there, the artwork that's in there, we picked, I was on the art committee and Jean Seth, judge Seth's wife, who had the art gallery in Santa Fe was on it.

[01:07:59] Judge Tacha: And we [01:08:00] were able to use some of that money to use tent circuit artists. And I still love the art in the courthouse. So, uh, that was sort of one of those things in the lore of the court that shouldn't be forgotten, that the judges hijacked the hijacked the post office. Then we went to dedicate it and the dedication, was quite memorable.

[01:08:25] Judge Tacha: I'm sure there are pictures somewhere quite memorable because, justice Ginsburg was our circuit justice at the time. Judge Seymour was chief. The head of the GSA regionally was a woman. I guess I was chair, I don't know the building committee. Anyway, the podium was all women and that was for a courthouse.

[01:08:46] Judge Tacha: It was amazing. And it was during the judicial conference. So, we did the dedication out in front of the current building. But then I somehow had winked all of the judges. I said, [01:09:00] let's not hire entertainment for the evening. Let's do a musical. Oh my gosh.

[01:09:07] Judge Tacha: How they listened to me. Now I think, who did you think you were? You were just this lowly woman judge. But I talked him into doing a musical and we had a Denver bass. Not, they weren't professional. They were actually mostly lawyers, but really good musicians and stuff that kind of backed us up.

[01:09:27] Judge Tacha: But we wrote, I wrote most of the music, well, the lyrics that somebody else, I didn't write the music, I wrote the lyrics, among them I will never forget, was one that had Judge Baldock and several New Mexico, mamas Don't let your cowboys grow up to be judges. And then one of them was, judge Henry and I did, um, all I want is a new courthouse.

[01:09:55] Judge Tacha: I had the parasol and all my yard and did the women judges, and this did [01:10:00] not sit well with Justice White's wife, particularly. We had our evening gowns on under, we used robes for all the costumes, different colored robes, cheap robes, not face robes, but, anyway, we did just the bare necessities.

[01:10:18] Judge Tacha: And, and there were about six or eight of us, judge SMU, justice Ginsburg, me, Kathy Brattle, judge Vasquez, I can't remember who all, there weren't that many women judges at the time, so it was funny. And then Steve Anderson, judge Anderson was the fandom, and he were an I patch. He narrated the whole thing and judges McKay and Logan did, I'm too sexy, too sexy for these robes.

[01:10:48] Judge Tacha: And we were trying to teach them to do the, uh, uh, it was an impossible task. But anyway, we did that. So those, those, tapes, those whatever they [01:11:00] were films still exist. I think there were those who still to this day don't believe it happened, but it did. So, let's see. What else have I forgotten here?

[01:11:11] Laila Kassis: So, you actually left your position to become Dean of Pepperdine University School of Law in 2011. Can you tell us what interested you in that position? 

[01:11:20] Judge Tacha: Yeah. It was the hardest decision in my life, uh, because I loved the court, as you can no doubt tell. I still do and I still get very nostalgic when I go back there.

[01:11:29] Judge Tacha: In fact, I went for a portrait hanging and, my daughter did my portrait, and it doesn't look like the rest of them. Now Judge Seymour's most recent one is closer, but mine's very contemporary. And I still love it. There are some lawyers that have even said to my face, it was probably not in the tradition of traditional portraits, but to me it's very special because my daughter did it and I think it looks just like me.

[01:11:57] Judge Tacha: So, but in any case, I, it was [01:12:00] hard to leave the court, but I had loved academic life. As a judge it's a little confining and, I guess it's clear I'm not really a shrinking violet. I found it hard not to be able to talk about things. And it was at a time when legal education, well still is, but it was in real transition.

[01:12:20] Judge Tacha: US News and World Report, where do you rank? And, uh, who's got the best law school? All of those questions were at the forefront. The cost of legal education, what constitutes a good legal education? How much should you do practical versus, sort of scholarly traditional stuff. All of those questions just kind of swirled around me.

[01:12:42] Judge Tacha: And I know it was from my years in law school, legal education, and I'd stayed pretty close to law schools. I'd been board of visitors at various places and things. So, several law schools actually made some inquiries, but the one that interested [01:13:00] me for a whole variety of reasons, one of which was the president of Pepperdine was from Lawrence, Kansas, and one of the former presidents had been a law student of mine at Kansas.

[01:13:10] Judge Tacha: So those two people, plus Ken Starr preceded me and I'd known him well. So, I had all these people trying to talk me into going to Pepperdine, and I had never worked in a private institution. I'd certainly never worked in a church affiliated institution. I'd never lived on the west coast. I'd lived on the East coast, and I'd lived in Kansas, but I thought, hmm, all of those things that makes it kind of interesting.

[01:13:36] Judge Tacha: It's something I've never done, and I still had some energy, and I guess a few brains left. And it was a wonderful experience. It was interesting. I wouldn't say I solved any of those problems. I hope I left a good legacy. Legal education is really at a crossroads, I think even now, and then I came home before COVID, thank Heavens because John didn't [01:14:00] move there with me, so I was commuting the whole time.

[01:14:03] Judge Tacha: So, I left in part because of the constraints of the judiciary, but it mainly because I loved academic life and I kind of wanted to watch legal education right where it's happening. And I got to be very good friends with Wal Deans from all over the country. And that was really fun and really interesting.

[01:14:21] Judge Tacha: I don't know that they've resolved all of their issues yet, but it's still a work in progress. 

[01:14:28] Laila Kassis: So, you retired as Dean in 2016. What have you been up to since? 

[01:14:31] Judge Tacha: Well, I'd spent several years doing mediation, arbitration and neutral consulting for Jams, which is a national organization with lots of retired judges and I liked it, and I got to see lots of lawyers and do some interesting work.

[01:14:46] Judge Tacha: I liked the neutral consulting the best I found, found arbitration, a little constraining. I was used to being a judge and arbitration, you kind of had to respond to the parties here, so that was a [01:15:00] little hard. I won order everybody around. Uh uh, but it was interesting, and I had some really interesting cases.

[01:15:08] Judge Tacha: I got to the point where, well several things. I wanted to be really active in my grandkids lives and I wanted to be really active as much as I can or they'll let me, my kids' lives. And. I was getting older and, John, we aren't getting any younger and we've had this amazing life. So, I decided I wanted to be home.

[01:15:32] Judge Tacha: I mean, call me Dorothy. I wanted to be back in Kansas, and I wanted to be able to speak out and these times it seems to me call for speaking out a bit. So now I'm involved with a group called the Article three Coalition, which is, supported by some very prestigious foundations, where retired judges are trying to speak on behalf of the active judges who can't [01:16:00] speak and try to respond to what appears to be a serious lack of public education about what the courts do, what judges do, how important.

[01:16:13] Judge Tacha: The system of laws is, to say nothing, the threats and all of the pernicious sides of this. So now I'm doing totally pro bono work and a lot of work in my community, which I wanted to do, and my grandkids, of course, two of whom you saw here. 

[01:16:32] Laila Kassis: One last question. What advice would you give to attorneys and judges today? 

[01:16:39] Judge Tacha: Well, I'll separate attorneys and judges and people generally, to attorneys and judges. I would say the clear articulation of what you're doing and why you're doing it is extremely important.

[01:16:52] Judge Tacha: Of all the things that I knew how to do. Somehow some way being able to [01:17:00] express myself orally and in the written word is by far the most important. You can have the most intellectually stimulating thoughts or do the most interesting things, but if you can't communicate it to the general public, and I'm not talking about talking down, talking with, the general public and it's a whole new vocabulary out there I might add.

[01:17:26] Judge Tacha: But it's those communication skills that we've got to hone, and we've got to be able to be very clear about what the rule of law is, why we have three branches, government, what judges do and how they do it case by case by case. So that's what I would say to people in life lessons. The best thing that ever happened to me was somehow some way I was able to say to myself at a very young age, get your priorities right and remember that [01:18:00] every hour is a priority setting hour every day is every month is every year is a lifetime. Because if you don't know what those priorities are, you're going to mess it up and you're going to be sorry. So, I always say to young people, you know, everybody is always saying, young people come to me and now I'm worrying about my life work balance or work life balance.

[01:18:24] Judge Tacha: And I start laughing, because you can't worry about that. What you do is prioritize every hour that you have for whatever is the most important at that hour to you. But you’ve got to be honest, if you don't be honest with yourself, then you're going to come to 80 years old and you're not going to be very happy with where you left it.

[01:18:46] Judge Tacha: So that's my life advice. 

[01:18:48] Laila Kassis: Well, thank you for sitting with us today, judge Taha, it's been a pleasure. 

[01:18:52] Judge Tacha: Thank you. And thank you for the work that you are doing. I think oral histories are important. They, they capture a moment in [01:19:00] time of every institution, so thank you. 

[01:19:02] Laila Kassis: Thank you, judge.

[01:19:04] Judge Tacha: This is Judge Tacha and thank you for listening to Tale of the 10th. 

[01:19:09] Tina Howell: This is Tina Howell, the editor and producer of Tales from the 10th. Subscribe and download at the Historical Society's website, 10th circuit history.org, or at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcast. Special thanks to Greg Kerwin, Brent Cohen, Stacy Guillon, Leah Schwartz and Diane Baursfeld. 

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