For Judge Amul Thapar, the Rule of Law Counts

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Judge Amul Thapar is one of many excellent appointments President Trump has made to the federal courts of appeals.  He showed it again in his opinion today for a unanimous Sixth Circuit panel that reversed, and removed from the case, a district judge disinclined to follow established law.  The subtitle of Judge Thapar’s work could easily be, “Being A Judge Is A Job Not An Anointment.”

As the National Law Journal reports:

A panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ordered that a man be resentenced and his case reassigned to a different district judge after the trial court refused to give the man a new sentence in line with a prior ruling from the circuit.

In an opinion issued Monday, Judge Amul Thapar wrote the appeals court had “seen this case before,” as it had previously sided with the government’s appeal of a 12-month home confinement sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman of the Western District of Tennessee to a man who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges. Judge Bernice Donald and Senior Judge Alice Batchelder also considered the appeal.

The circuit court had previously found the sentence was “unreasonable,” as the sentencing guidelines called for the man, Dane Schrank, to serve 97 to 120 months in prison. But when the case was remanded to Lipman, she declined to impose a new sentence and criticized the Sixth Circuit “for ‘second-guess[ing]’ her sentence and said that she would not impose a sentence that ‘does not make sense,’” according to Thapar’s opinion.

“But the district judge didn’t stop there,” Thapar continued. “She also found time to criticize the ‘sophistication of the judges on the Sixth Circuit when it comes to computers’ and said that Schrank’s misconduct—accessing the dark web over the course of five days and downloading nearly 1,000 images of children being raped—was ‘much less exaggerated’ than ‘the Sixth Circuit judges realize.’ She concluded by noting, ‘maybe the Sixth Circuit will reverse me again.’”

Good guess there, Judge Lipman!

One can assume arguendo that there are two sides to the kiddie porn debate; the sentences are indeed sobering.  But no reasonable person can assume that there are two sides to the rule of law debate.  Either we have law or we have the varying tastes of our robed masters.  Judge Thapar makes it clear which side he’s on.  Simultaneously, he makes clear why he would be a good choice for the Supreme Court.