Tales from the 10th
Tales from the 10th
Judge Seymour
Judge Stephanie Seymour, interviewed in July 2025, reflects on her 46-year tenure as a judge on the 10th Circuit. Born in Battle Creek, Michigan, she attended Smith College and Harvard Law School, where she was one of 23 women in a class of 580. Seymour discussed her early career challenges, including being the only woman in law firms and balancing motherhood with her legal practice. She highlighted significant cases like the Muskogee Creek Nation bingo case and the Brown vs. Board of Education reopening. Seymour also shared her experiences as Chief Judge, including handling the Oklahoma City bombing case and the evolution of the courts.
Tales from the 10th Podcast
Judge Seymour 2025
Erin Gust: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Tales from the 10th, a podcast about the rich history, culture, and contributions of the 10th Circuit, brought to you by the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and the 10th Circuit Historical Society. I'm your co-host, Erin Gust.
Laila Kassis: I'm your co-host, Laila Cassis,
Tina Howell: and I'm your producer, Tina Howell.
Erin Gust: Hello everyone and welcome to Tale from the 10th. This is your host, Erin Gust. Today I'm joined by Judge Stephanie Seymour. This interview is being conducted in July, 2025 before the upcoming September ceremony, celebrating Judge Seymour's 46 years as a circuit Judge at the 10th Circuit and her turning to inactive senior [00:01:00] status.
It's a privilege to have you Judge Seymour.
Judge Seymour: Thank you.
Erin Gust: I'd like to start by diving into your early career if that's okay?
Judge Seymour: Sure.
Erin Gust: Tell us about your background and how you decided to pursue a career in the law.
Judge Seymour: Well, I grew up in a fairly small town, battle Creek, Michigan, and , I was a good student, good grades.
My dad, who hadn't gone to college, wanted me to go to an Ivy League school, and they didn't take women back then. So,, I went to Smith College, which turned a women's college in North Hampton, Massachusetts, which turned out to be the best thing I could possibly have done because I was kind of a shy kid in high school.
But being at Smith with all those smart women and no guys around during the week, um, was really great for me and gave me a lot of confidence in myself. So, I got [00:02:00] interested in going to law school because I was a political science major in my junior year. I had a class that involved constitutional law, and I had a great professor.
I found that fascinating. That's when I decided to go to law school.
Erin Gust: What was your law school experience like?
Judge Seymour: Interesting. I was one of 23 women in a class of 580, and I had no idea Harvard was that big until I got there. Um, I had a lot of guys say to me, you shouldn't be here taking the place of a man.
And my response was, there's only 23 of us, there's 560 of you. You shouldn't be here taking the place of a woman. And that usually shut them up.
Erin Gust: That's a good response.
Judge Seymour: Classes were great. I loved my classes, loved my professors. I just found it fascinating.
Erin Gust: What did you do after law school?
Judge Seymour: Well, I, [00:03:00] um, married the guy that sat next to me in contract class.
And, he went to Harvard Business School for a year after law school and I went to work for a firm in Boston, Goodwin Proctor, where I was there , just for that year. Had very, everybody was very nice to me, had interesting cases, and then we, uh, when Andy graduated from business school, we moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is where he was from.
And I thought I'd come to the ends of the earth in the late sixties 'cause I grew up in where I grew up, one high school, totally integrated. And when I moved to Tulsa it was very not, very segregated. Uh, racist whites only place signs, places I refuse to go, but... So it took a while for it to change. Schools there didn't segregate until the 10th circuit told [00:04:00] them to, and I think it was 1972.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: So how did you kind of manage that initially?
Judge Seymour: Um, oh, just, I had, uh, worked for a great firm. I got my job after second year of law school in the summer. My husband got a call from a lawyer named John Arrington, who had gone to Harvard Law School, asked him if he wanted a summer job, and he said, no, I already have one, but I have this wife.
That's how I got my first job and I had very nice associates. We worked in Tulsa and then, we moved to Houston. He worked for Reading Bates Offshore drilling company and we went to Houston. I worked for Baker Botts there for not long year, year and a half while we were there.
Erin Gust: Were you doing litigation at [00:05:00] these firms?
Judge Seymour: Um, yeah. Some, a little bit of everything. I was the only woman.
Erin Gust: What was that like being the only woman?
Judge Seymour: Well, it was interesting because. We moved there in early November and I had an interview in one of the managing partners. He could not look me in the eye. He looked. I was sitting here. He was sitting there.
He was actually over there, and he was twiddling the cord and the venetian blind behind him and talking to me sideways.
Erin Gust: So dismissive
Judge Seymour: and I only wanted to work three days a week. Oh, I had, I forgot to tell you, I had a baby in Tulsa, when I was still in Tulsa and still working. And I went to work on Monday.
He was born a month early. So the next morning, Tuesday, um, I called and said, um, I'm not coming to work today. And there were no maternity leave [00:06:00] back then, so no, I had to just quit.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: So I moved to Houston and had this baby, and I went to work and I only wanted to work three days a week. So I told the guy that, and he twiddle, twiddle twiddled, his venetian blinds.
he said, oh, okay. And I asked him about how much he would pay me, and he told me, and I said, I'm not working for a penny, less than three fifths of what, I had Harvard classmates, a couple of them there, and I knew what they were making 'cause I called 'em up ahead of time and asked them, so twiddle, twiddle.
And he said, oh, okay, but you have to start next week. And I said, I can't. My parents are coming for a month over Christmas. I can't start till January. More fiddle. Fiddle. Oh, okay. Um, and he agreed to pay me three fifths of what the other guys making. Well, when I went to work in January, I had just found out I was unexpectedly pregnant again.
Erin Gust: Baby number two
Judge Seymour: Baby number two, 13 months apart. [00:07:00]
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. So I, I wanted to go, I wanted to work there. So, and, , , high wasted dresses were in back then. So I wore those, and I was, I think I was close to six months pregnant, five months, five and a half months pregnant when I really started needing to wear maternity clothes.
And I went to tell, I was in the labor law department and the. One partner, it was a very small department. One partner, uh, was super nice guy and I went to tell him that I was gonna have a baby in August. He burst into laughter and he said, I can hardly wait to go tell what's his name, the guy who had interviewed that our lady labor lawyer is going into labor in August.
He went cackling down the hall, no maternity leave. I had to quit.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: And with two kids took, I [00:08:00] was off a year and then I called about coming back to work and they said yes, three days a week. Yes. And I wanted a salary increase, and they gave me that.
Erin Gust: Quite the negotiator.
Judge Seymour: Well, I learned that at Smith.
Judge Seymour: Oh, went back to work in December and in January my husband got transferred to Singapore.
Erin Gust: Wow, okay. Very different than Tulsa and Houston.
Judge Seymour: And that was Baker Bott's. First experience with a woman lawyer.
Although when I was up for, wanted to become a judge and called and asked this labor lawyer guy if he would give me a recommendation. He said, oh yes. He said, we would love to have a federal judge, and they gave me a very nice recommendation.
Erin Gust: That's awesome. So you ended up in Singapore. Did you practice [00:09:00] law over there or what was that like?
Judge Seymour: I tried, I had a British, no American firms then. Have you seen Crazy Rich Asians?
Erin Gust: Yes.
Judge Seymour: No high rises in Singapore when I moved there.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, it was nice. Great. Interesting. Um, a lot of Chinese majority Malaysian. Mm-hmm. A lot of Chinese, a lot of Indians from India. Um, the working people were the Malaysians and they were sort of discriminated against.
It was like a whole new world for me. I had a British law firm that I interviewed with. They agreed to hire me. Singapore would not give me a work permit. Oh, they never said why.
Erin Gust: Interesting.
Judge Seymour: So I had a year off, two little kids, but for $60 a month I had a cook, a baby amma. These were all Malaysian, a gardener and a driver for the car.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: Wow. [00:10:00]
Judge Seymour: Yes, it was very nice. Couldn't work. So learned how to play duplicate bridge.
Erin Gust: Did you travel around Asia at all at that time? I mean, I feel like you're so close to so many places.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. Hong Kong. I loved Hong Kong. But after about a year, I found out my, then husband was running around on me.
Erin Gust: I'm sorry.
Judge Seymour: So I said, I'm outta here.
Erin Gust: Yeah.
Judge Seymour: Took the two kids and went back to Houston. No, I went back to Tulsa.
Erin Gust: Why did you go back to Tulsa?
Judge Seymour: My mother wanted to know that. Why didn't you come to Michigan? I went to Tulsa because the first firm I worked at, I had about five associates who were then in different law firms and I sort sort of had my pick, because I had contacts and I went to work for one, picked one who went to work there.
And that's where I met Tom, my second husband. And we were married for 51 years before [00:11:00] he died a couple years ago.
Erin Gust: I'm sorry.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: It seems like 51 really amazing years.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: And y'all,
Judge Seymour: yes.
Erin Gust: Like to travel and.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: Lots of grandchildren and toys.
Judge Seymour: Well because the court we were off in the summertime, so
Erin Gust: That's right. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Erin Gust: 10th circuit’s off in the summer.
Mm-hmm.
Erin Gust: Love that. Hmm. Summer break. Yeah. Um, jumping back into kind of some of your early career, um, could you tell us about a few of your mentors as a young lawyer and they, how they helped guide you?
Judge Seymour: Um, well, I had. Great mentors in the first firm I worked in, I was an associate and um, and even when I went back, moved back to Tulsa and went to work for Doerner, Doerner, Stewart, Saunders, Daniel and, and Landingham[00:12:00] back then, and all guys, but all very nice to me and gave me interesting cases.
Erin Gust: Do you remember some of those early day cases? I know you've heard so many cases over the years being a judge.
Judge Seymour: No, I'll, I'll tell you a funny story about, I hated state court because it was always, you know, people filed a g zillion motions and you would sit there until they got to yours and then the other side will want to pass it, and it got passed.
It drove me nuts. So I asked if I could just work on federal cases and they let me do that. And there was only one federal trial judge in Tulsa back then. Well, when I moved there in the late sixties, there were only five women practicing law. Two of them were in their sixties. One was in partnership with their husband. One was actually a state trial judge. But when I had this federal court work, [00:13:00] the, I had one judge, male, he had a, career law clerk Marilyn, we called her Judge Marilyn because she was a lot smarter than he was. She handled all the pretrial work and we were in his, library area, doing a sup pretrial case, and she was handling that.
And the lawyers on the other side were from Oklahoma. We took a bathroom break, came up, I came up the hall this way to go to the lady's room. The guys went down around the corner to go to the men's room, and as I was coming back, the judge came out of his chambers to go into court. He was in his robes and he saw me and he threw his arms around me to gimme a big hug.
And the lawyers from Oklahoma City came around the corner when the judge was hugging me, and I went. Smiled and waved over his shoulders and they settled. Bad but effective.
Erin Gust: Oh, my goodness. That's fantastic. [00:14:00] Effective indeed. And moving to, um, your decision to join the bench and be a judge, um, why did you decide to become a judge?
Judge Seymour: I was a political science major at Smith and my junior year I had a constitutional law class and I found it fascinating and that's what got me interested in going to law school.
Erin Gust: Would you please tell us about the application process, becoming a judge?
Judge Seymour: Um, very interesting. Jimmy Carter set up merit nominating commissions because he wanted women and minorities. And before that it would just been the senators appointed people and they were all white male, of course. Um, and the commission was, I was living in Oklahoma at the time and the commission was over the sixth states in the 10th circuit, and Uh, it consisted of 11 people, six lawyers, five non-lawyers, [00:15:00] and the, I heard this story many years later. The, it's a good thing. It was many years later, the 70-year-old white male lawyer uh, pronounced himself, chairman of this group, and they had the first meeting and he sat there and he said, we have 35 applications and we're gonna go around the table and everybody's going to throw out somebody who's obviously not qualified.
He said, I'll start. And he threw me out and this woman, landlord sitting halfway around the table said, what? I think she's really well qualified. And he said, no, she's not. She's got four children. She couldn't possibly handle the job.
Oy
Judge Seymour: And she didn't know what to say, but obviously she, by the time I got around her, she threw out a white male justice on the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which turned out to be his favorite.
Candidate. He said, you are crazy, but he's obviously well-qualified. [00:16:00] She said, no, he's not. He's got, he's got five children, and he couldn't possibly handle the job.
Erin Gust: That is fantastic.
Judge Seymour: Isn’t that a great story. So they had a conversation about whether that was really a disqualifying factor.
Hmm.
Judge Seymour: Decided it wasn't.
Erin Gust: No.
Judge Seymour: Put both our names back in Carter had asked for three to five names. They gave them four. I was on it, the Oklahoma. Supreme Court Justice was on it, but I was the only female, so I got picked.
Erin Gust: How old were you at the time?
Judge Seymour: 39.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. 39, 4 children.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: What was that like? Especially that first time going into oral argument?
Judge Seymour: I had a, well, I have to tell you about my family life. I had a fabulous husband.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: And, uh, a great, we didn't call them nannies back then, but a great woman who worked for us and, uh, she actually cleaned the house and took care of the kids. I was one of [00:17:00] eight Judges on the 10th circuit and I,eight active judges when I was appointed and it was just interesting.
It was fascinating work. I mean, well, it was crazy at the beginning because pro se prison cases had just started coming in and we were slammed, really slammed with oral argument ‘cases and non argued. We didn't, we didn't have a screening panels back then, right. We just had a, it was crazy. It wasn't until, well, we got our second woman under Reagan.
Um, I started in ‘79. She started in ‘85, I think, to Deanell Tacha. She was great. It was just nice to have another female, um, because of our caseload. I think maybe we were up to maybe just nine by then. Um, [00:18:00] and she, after being on the court for a few years, this crazy caseload we had, she proposed that we have a retreat and talk about how we were going to handle things.
And she's the one that came up with the idea of screening panels.
Erin Gust: Oh, wow, I didn't know that.
Mm-hmm.
Erin Gust: Because screening panels are, they're great.
Judge Seymour: Yes, they're great. Great brain. Um, and so we decided, we had a hell week after that canceled court, canceled oral argument. We were divided into panels of three and we said, we need to find out what's in there before we can figure out what to do. And so we had this hell week and we all got, they just brought the boxes from the clerk's office.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: And the three of us on separate different panels would go through them and figure out which ones were [00:19:00] easy pro se prisoner cases.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: Which ones were easy, which ones really needed oral argument and which ones could be handled by staff attorneys. That were non argued cases, but not, and we decided that we would this, A lot of it was Deanell’s idea that we would have screening panels and we would take the really easy ones, just divide them up among our panel and do them slam dunk, and then give to the staff attorneys ones that didn't need oral argument.
Um, but needed more work. And so, they started and expanded the staff attorney's office, and they started writing memos. And then we would have, in addition to the oral argument cases, we would have non argued cases and we would go to Denver sit panels of three, staff attorneys would present these cases and we would divide 'em up, take home some.
Erin Gust: Wow. I didn't [00:20:00] know. Yeah. Judge Tacha.
Judge Seymour: Oh yeah.
Erin Gust: Coming up with screeners.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, she did. She was great.
Erin Gust: That's fantastic. Mm-hmm. So I'd like to reflect a little bit on, you were 46 years on the bench, you being the first female judge appointed to the 10th circuit. What was it like being a mother for and a judge on the 10th circuit?
And you talked a little bit about how you would help at home, but um, kind of managing at 39 kind of pretty big responsibility and four people, little people relying on you.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, it was crazy.
Erin Gust: It's honest.
Judge Seymour: Fortunately, my second husband Tom, was super with the kids. When I was gone, I'd call home and talk to the kids and they'd say.
Dad's making fried chicken or dad's making blueberry pie. All kinds of stuff that we never had when I was home running things. So they had a good time. He had a good time and it made me very comfortable being on the court.
Yeah. Having [00:21:00] a supportive husband and, and help like that. That's, that's a couple.
And, the court was interesting because we would get together for, uh. Drinks before dinner. We'd go to all go to dinner together, back then, and the chief judge would have us, he had a suite and he would have us over for drinks before it was Oliver Seth when I first went on the court.
And we would have, and so we all got to know each other. That's one of the reasons we. Got to interact with each other and learn about each other and become friends as well as judges. So that made our court very nice.
Erin Gust: Right. And I think one of the characteristics about the 10th circuit is you hear how collegial and close and respectful it is. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, it sounds like not only are you colleagues, but your friends.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, [00:22:00] they were. I mean, I think I mentioned to you that, I was a skier and Judge Baldock came on. He wasn't on there originally, he was a Reagan appointee, I think.
And so we would go skiing after, in a January term or March term, at the end of the week, we would go skiing and take our law clerks with us. That was fun.
Erin Gust: It was really fun. Yeah. So who's the better skier You are? Judge Baldock.
Judge Seymour: I think I was a better skier, but That's okay. We didn't do a lot. We skied with our A clerk and a lot of them were just learning, so
Erin Gust: That's fun.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, it was great.
Erin Gust: Has being a woman and a mother informed your judicial philosophy at all? Yeah, because your life forms your judicial philosophy, and that's true of everybody, all my colleagues. Um, but I think, yeah, when you have kids [00:23:00] and you just get a different perspective about things and you have to figure out how , we're all gonna work together.
And that informed me about how to work with my colleagues.
Erin Gust: Are there other life experiences that helped you serve as an effective appellate judge?
Judge Seymour: Um, travel, maybe. We traveled a lot, my husband and I in the summer times. Yeah, everything you do helps your perspective. I think. Life.
Erin Gust: Life.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: Let's talk a little bit about your cases. What are some of the most memorable cases you worked on while at the 10th Circuit?
Judge Seymour: You, let me think about this ahead of time and, because it's hard to remember. I've had so many cases, but then I thought of, Muskogee Creek Nation, bingo versus Oklahoma. I had no idea about [00:24:00] Indian law until I came on the 10th Circuit, but we have a lot of tribes in this circuit, and Oklahoma alone has 39 tribes, five big ones.
It was Indian country before it became a state. And so, the Creek Nation started the first bingo parlor in Tulsa, and the state wanted to tax it. State taxes, like they tax businesses. And the tribe said, no, you can't tax us. And Oklahoma said, yes we can. And so the tribe filed this lawsuit, federal court.
I can't remember what the district court decided. Probably no. But it came up to me and I was on the panel, and I wrote the opinion. Um, I think we were, all of us agreed. And, it was one of the first opinions in the country that held that Indian nations, Indian reservations, Indian nations, [00:25:00] were independent sovereigns.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: And, and we held in the case that they were sovereign, just like the state of Oklahoma. And the state could not tax it for something, a business ever running on their property.
Erin Gust: Yeah, that's, that's a very important massive case.
Judge Seymour: Yes. But Indian law cases were great.
Erin Gust: Fascinating.
Judge Seymour: Fascinating.
Erin Gust: Do you have, I guess, a favorite case or opinion you've worked on? Similar, kind of similar question, but again, so many years.
Judge Seymour: I tell people ask me that and I tell them there is one Brown versus board of education. It was. ‘86 or ‘87 and back then all the cases were printed out sitting on the library table.
My law clerks would stack everything up and I would go in and look through them and see what I wanted to [00:26:00] read first. because there was always a lot. I saw this stack of briefs and the Brown v. Board of Education with a very old district court number on it, and I thought, what. The heck.
Because as you know that case was decided in 1954.
Erin Gust: Right
Judge Seymour: When the Supreme Court said desegregate with all deliberate speed. It was Topeka, Kansas.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: Went back to Topeka, Kansas. The little, the iconic little girl whose parents brought the original case on her behalf. By the time it went through federal trial court, federal appellate court, and the Supreme Court, she had graduated from high school and was off in college.
The case went back down and it just sat there. She came back to Topeka, Kansas, got married, had a little girl. Schools were still desegregated, and she reopened the original case on behalf of her daughter. A[00:27:00] Republican trial Judge in Topeka said, oh, get out of here. This is too old. Came up to my panel.
I wrote the opinion. A shot longer than what I'm going to tell you, but the bottom line was what happened to desegregate with all deliberate speed Topeka, Kansas? Get with it to me, sent it down and they ended up starting a magnet school system there.
Judge Seymour: That's how they started desegregation, which is what they did in Tulsa too, to desegregate schools.
Erin Gust: Wow.
Judge Seymour: So yeah, that was a surprise. But you know, we have very interesting cases. That's why I've been on the court so long.
Erin Gust: What was the most difficult case for you to work on while during your time?
Judge Seymour: Death penalty cases? Oklahoma had a lot of death penalty cases and mostly just coming from Oklahoma. I hated them. They were always horrible circumstances and over the course of my years, I sat on [00:28:00] two where they were actually innocent.
Wow.
Judge Seymour: One of them, the first one, the district court held against the defendant, oh, that was in state court. And then this was habeas. Um, he'd been sentenced to death and filed a habeas action raising constitutional issues. And my panel held that he had ineffective assistance of counsel and we sent her back down.
And ultimately, he was held, he was found innocent Grisham wrote a book called The Innocent Man about that case. Well, what happened was, I think DNA came out when it went back down for retrial. DNA came out and there was one witness against him for this murder, and it turned out the witness was the guy who did it.
Erin Gust: Oh, my goodness.
Judge Seymour: Which is what they discovered after DNA got him off. Yeah. [00:29:00]
Erin Gust: That’s intense. I should go read the, the opinion.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: And you mentioned you worked on a second,
Judge Seymour: A second opinion Where the guy was actually innocent and, he was found innocent after he was, he was convicted and given death sentence and he was found innocent. Actually, I think it was also DNA evidence and, but on habeas. Mm-hmm. And, the guy who turned out, the guy who did it was, connected with law officers somehow. I can't remember the details, but that may, I just made me wonder about all the other cases.
That's why I hated death penalty cases. And when I took senior status, that was the first thing I quit doing. No more death penalty cases, because we had a lot of them over the years.
Erin Gust: There are a lot.
Judge Seymour: They’ve slowed down because there've been a lot [00:30:00] of, cases about the method of execution and they started using injections and stuff and that got raised a lot of issues about that. But now they're back to doing them. I just see from looking at cases in my court coming up.
Erin Gust: Yeah.
Judge Seymour: Did you have any of those when you clerked?
Erin Gust: Judge did have a few of those out of, Oklahoma.
Judge Seymour: Oh yeah.
Erin Gust: I guess for the listeners, I clerked for Judge Tymkovich.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: It, it's really heavy stuff.
Judge Seymour: Yes. Because cases are usually awful. Facts, factually awful.
Erin Gust: Bad facts.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: And usually the briefs start off with the facts and you're, oh, goodness. Transitioning to the fact that you were a chief judge for a while, right?
Judge Seymour: Yes.
Erin Gust: What was it like serving as Chief of the [00:31:00] 10th Circuit?
Judge Seymour: Very interesting, in part because we had a good circuit,, being chief judge, you know, you're chief of the whole circuit, not just of the court of appeals, the district court, the magistrate judges, the bankruptcy judges, and it's just very interesting job. And I had to cut back my caseload because it's a lot of work.
But then, we hired a new circuit executive who turned out to be great and that helped. So, it was a seven year term, which was nice because it ended., Because I much prefer doing my, judicial opinion work as opposed to the lot of stuff. Um, including, cases brought against judges in the court for whatever, and there [00:32:00] were those.
Erin Gust: Were those difficult?
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: How did you handle those?
Judge Seymour: Well, I set up three judge panels and we got the facts and decided one way or another, and, um, some of 'em we upheld.
Erin Gust: Was that difficult?
Judge Seymour: Yes, but we had evidentiary hearings. Sometimes one of judge just resigned. But yeah, I hated those, you know? And a lot of people filed them and they were baloney, but you still had to deal with them.
Erin Gust: Right? You gotta investigate. Mm-hmm. Confirm.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. A big diversion from judicial work.
Erin Gust: Yeah, kind of perhaps a little more HR.
Judge Seymour: Uh, yeah, very much HR and we actually started an HR department as a result of that, so that helped a [00:33:00] lot.
Erin Gust: And speaking of kind of difficulty, during, while you were as chief there was the Oklahoma City bombing, what was it like to be chief during that? Judge Seymour: It was awful. Yeah, it was really scary because Judge Holloway was in his building, and I called and I couldn't get him on the phone.
Erin Gust: Oh gosh.
Judge Seymour: He subsequently called me, they'd left the building and gotten out. He called and said he was okay. And, but it was horrible. Um, and then, they caught the guy that did it and then they came the question of trying him. And the judges in Oklahoma recused, which makes sense. And I appointed, because I was chief, I had to appoint the replacement judge.
I appointed Judge Matsch from Colorado, trial Judge. He was actually a Republican appointee; he was super smart and super fair. He did a great job.
Erin Gust: How did you decide [00:34:00] on Judge Matsch?
Judge Seymour: I just knew he was a good judge from his opinions. Reading them, reading his cases where he handled them.
Yeah, he was great.
Erin Gust: How did the bombing affect the federal courts?
Judge Seymour: It was so scary. I mean, you know, just because, well, we added a lot of security after that. I think that was the biggest change. But of course, everybody was just horrified. That that could happen.
Erin Gust: Yeah. It's, and it's so especially for you, so close to home.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, very close to home.
Erin Gust: Very shocking. It's just so impressive that you were able to, okay, so close to home, but also, how are we gonna move forward and, and give these guys a fair, fair trial under our system?
Judge Seymour: Yep. Yep.
Erin Gust: It's very impressive.
Judge Seymour: Well, judge Matsch was a great judge, so that I knew he was.
Good judge. So
Erin Gust: Moving to some of your [00:35:00] relationships on the 10th circuit, two of your close friends I've heard are judges, Monroe McKay and Jim Logan.
Judge Seymour: Yes.
Erin Gust: Will you please share with us what you learned from knowing and working with them?
Judge Seymour: They were also Carter appointees, and they were on the court when I came on the court and we started going out together after, on Thursday nights. We always had, criminal cases on Friday and they tended to be easier than a lot of the civil cases that we had. So we would go out, um. And party and Judge McKay didn't drink. So Jim Logan and I would often share a bottle of wine, his Monroe job, to get us back to the hotel.
Erin Gust: Oh, my goodness.
Judge Seymour: But we got to become great friends because they were, well, they were, you know, as I say, they're both Carter appointees and so we had a lot of [00:36:00] Democrats and um. More liberal than a lot of our other judges that brought us together.
Erin Gust: And you had mentioned Judge Holloway earlier, um, and it's my understanding that you worked pretty closely with him as well as Judge Robert Henry. Do you have any insights about knowing and working with those two?
Judge Seymour: They were both great and, even though I had to tell Judge Holloway, he had get caught up. He did get caught up and he was just a super nice guy. And so was Robert Henry. We became good friends. I still keep in touch with Robert.
He's in the State of Washington. We talk on the phone every other month or so, just to keep in touch. But they were both really good judges. All my colleagues were pretty good judges.
Erin Gust: It's, it's a pretty [00:37:00] special circuit.
Have you ever found, judging to be, sometimes you hear that it can be isolating.
Have you ever found that?
Judge Seymour: Well, in some respects, because you can't, you know, you're isolated from lawyers really. As I said, I had great colleagues and that was. Nice. It is isolating because it's a lot of work. So you spend all your time keeping your nose to the grindstone when you're working full time.
Erin Gust: Reflecting back you've had 46 years of clerks and all the hiring and I'm sure weddings and as Judge Tymkovich calls them Grand Clerks.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: How has it been amassing this kind of fantastic clerk family and, and hiring future clerks and mentoring the future generation of attorneys?
Judge Seymour: One of the funnest parts of the job is hiring law clerks and having working with these great, smart lawyers for a year, and [00:38:00] I've had a couple of career law clerks too who stayed on longer. One of the best parts of the job is having law clerks and having the relationship with them for over a period of a year. And, after I was on the bench for a few years, we, we decided to have law clerk reunions every five years. And I've done that for years and years and years.
Erin Gust: What do those reunions usually entail?
Judge Seymour: Just getting together and having fun. We started doing it in Crested Butte when we got, got a house here and so it's great just getting together and, you know, they didn't get together separately from that, so they enjoyed meeting each other and getting to know each other, and that made a very cohesive bunch of ex-law clerks. They had something for me in Tulsa, in [00:39:00] Oklahoma, and a bunch of law clerks came back for that. And so I didn't do a reunion, those days are probably over with.
I have a former law clerk who lives in Denver and she's planning on a, having a dinner the night before by September night.
Erin Gust: Oh, nice.
Judge Seymour: And for the law clerks to come back.
Erin Gust: I imagine there're gonna be a lot.
Judge Seymour: It'll be fun. There were quite a few who came to this Tulsa thing.
Erin Gust: Yeah,
Judge Seymour: They had for me it was great fun.
Erin Gust: Probably really fun for them to go back to Tulsa and think about
Judge Seymour: Yes.
Erin Gust: The year there, and
Judge Seymour: I had reunions here for a lot and then I started having them in. In Tulsa.
Erin Gust: Nice.
Judge Seymour: Yeah.
Erin Gust: Moving to kind of reflecting on 46 years of 10th circuit service, what's been your favorite part of being a judge on the 10th circuit?
Judge Seymour: The [00:40:00] work , I can't imagine being a trial judge and all that. Being in court and having to decide all those. Evidentiary issues and things, but my job is more intellectual.
It's, uh, reading and deciding cases and writing opinions and I just, I loved all that and I loved the law clerks. I had great law clerks, and we had a great time. But the work has been fascinating. It's why 75% of judges, trial judges or circuit court judges, when we take senior status, 75% are still working.
And that takes a big load off the court. 'cause now we have a lot of senior judges. Um, I cut back what I did, 60% of the argued cases, when I first became senior and then I went down to 40 and yeah, we have to do 25% to get pay increases. So I've done that for a number of years.
Erin Gust: And you [00:41:00] recently sat in February, right?
Judge Seymour: I sat two days in Oklahoma, one day in Tulsa, and one day in Oklahoma City at the universities, which we’ve done quite a few times over the years. The court has, done panels in different places. Sat in law schools, which is great because we hear argument in law school. The students get to come and sit in and watch, and then we let them ask us questions afterwards.
We go back in the afternoon after we hear the cases in the morning, and we did that both in Oklahoma City where we sat first and then in Tulsa. I think we were like three days apart in February.
Erin Gust: That's really, yeah. That's really cool.
What advice would you give to female attorneys and judges today?
Judge Seymour: Go for it. Women power. That's what I tell my daughters and my, uh, eight of my grandchildren are girls. [00:42:00] And so yeah. It's about, it's a very different world than. When I practice law. But, it's great for women and, they have a lot of organizations for women lawyers. I know in Tulsa we had one, we would have get togethers and talk and advise each other on things.
I think it's great being a female lawyer. My job has just been great. I've loved it, which is why I worked for so long.
Erin Gust: Yeah.
Judge Seymour: I took senior status when I turned 65, which is a few years ago.
Erin Gust: You don't look it.
How has the 10th circuit changed over your 46 years on the bench?
Judge Seymour: Women! Yeah. Tacha was the second one in 85 and the next one wasn't until Mary Briscoe was a Clinton appointee.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: 94 or something like that. And uh, but now we have [00:43:00] Mary retired, but I think they're four or five of the 12 active judges are females. And certain I've seen in the courtroom it has changed for oral arguments. Now there are a lot more women than there ever were before, needless to say.
Erin Gust: Yeah. That, that makes sense.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. Women, I think, as I say, there are a lot of women legal organizations and they advise each other and that helps a lot how to handle the world and uh, it is less sexist than it used to be.
Erin Gust:Did you find the court. Sexist at all back 46 years ago? Or was it just kind of the legal profession world in general?
Judge Seymour: Yes. Yeah, no, the court was great. Um, they were, I mean, they were o bent over backwards to treat me nicely, which was nice. I was young as far as they [00:44:00] were concerned, so, um, they were all very great colleagues.
Erin Gust: How does taking an active senior status make you feel?
Judge Seymour: A little weird. I still have one case that I'm finishing up, um, but I'm moving from Tulsa to Durham, North Carolina. I have a daughter in Durham and a son in Chapel Hill. And the place I'm in at a retirement community, um, I just moved there at the end of May.
I moved in June two and then went on a trip to the Galapagos for two weeks with my son and two youngest grandkids and my daughter-in-law, and then was back there, and then I came here. So I haven't been in Durham very long, but the community is great. It's a forest at Duke, a lot of retired professors, a lot of interesting lectures and things going on all the time, so that's why I picked that.[00:45:00]
And course I have kids there, so it's just a whole new life, you know? And I'm gonna go, come back to judicial conferences, see my colleagues.
Erin Gust: Wonderful. Yeah, you’ve got the touch, the bench and bar coming up in San, or not the bench bar. The bench. The one in Santa Fe. Yes. The bench Without the bar.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, without the bar. Every other year. Judicial conferences, judges only. Yeah. That's Santa Fe. I'm going to that.
Erin Gust: Nice.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. Those are always fun.
Erin Gust: I bet well get, get to see each other and not have to talk just about cases.
Judge Seymour: Yeah, and it's, it's uh, trial judges and bankruptcy judges, magistrate judges, and we get togethers and it's great.
That's one of the things about the 10th circuit that's always kept us apretty collegial circuit.
Erin Gust: What are you gonna miss most about being on the bench?
Judge Seymour: Um. The intellectual [00:46:00] work. 'cause it was fascinating, my colleagues and I've done it for so long, it's just gonna be strange.
Erin Gust: Yeah. But the most of your life.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. Um, my husband died two years ago and my daughter who lived in Durham had me go to. Come to Durham, I think it was about three months after Tom's death and had me look at this place.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: And I really liked it a lot. And I got on the waiting list, went back home to Tulsa and decided I couldn't leave the house that Tom and I built together and all, it was a great house art we collected all over the world.
And so I stayed there for two years and then I decided getting older and you know, this is a great retirement community and it's nice to be near my kids and some of my grandkids, so it'll be different. It's just gonna be a whole new life. Yeah. But I will miss my colleagues and I'll [00:47:00] miss the very interesting work.
Erin Gust: So the name of this podcast is Tales from the 10th. So do you have any favorite tales or memories from your 46 years on the 10th circuit and. You can give multiple one, however many you want.
Judge Seymour: I have so many memories, I can't remember them. It's just been a, it's been a great bunch of, my colleagues have been great and the work is fascinating.
I think I told you that, uh, judge Baldock and I started taking our law clerks and mm-hmm. On ski trips and we've, we're very collegial court because we party together as well as judged together
Erin Gust: The 10th circuit. Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. So I have a lot of memories. I have memories of thinking of one particular memory we used to go dancing with.[00:48:00] staff attorneys.
Erin Gust: Where'd y'all go? Dancing.
Judge Seymour: Um, I can't remember the name of the place, but it was fun. I love to dance, so, um, and a number of my colleagues, a lot of 'em didn't go after the first because that was not their thing, but a number of them did. And we, this was always at the end of the week, um, or Thursday nights, and it was just fun.
Erin Gust: Federal judges going dancing. That's wonderful.
Judge Seymour: But it, you know, it gave us a great relationship with the staff attorneys too.
Erin Gust: Right. Yeah. The staff attorneys are fantastic at the circuit.
Judge Seymour: Yes. They are in part because they know we have a good circuit and
Erin Gust: I think we have the best circuit. I'm biased.
Judge Seymour: I am too, I am too. I've sat, you know, when you become a senior judge, you can sit around the other circuits.
Mm-hmm.
Judge Seymour: And I sat with the 11th circuit. I just didn't like the way they [00:49:00] handled their cases and so, and I thought it'd be fun to sit with the ninth Circuit. Mm-hmm. But then I looked at how they do their cases and I just didn't like it.
Everybody, every circuit is different learning that was fascinating. Every circuit operates differently. We have judicial conferences in Washington DC and so the judges would come back. And so we had a lot of get togethers and learned a lot and I did a, basically a seminar type thing trying to convince some of my colleagues from other circuits about our screening program.
Judge Seymour: Nobody picked it up.
Hmm.
Judge Seymour: They all did their own thing and so.
Erin Gust: Their loss.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. I think we're, I mean, you know, they just [00:50:00] didn't want to do that.
I think they didn't want to work staff attorneys like we did and that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. So I didn't sit around after that.
Erin Gust: That makes sense.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. Just took cases in our circuit. Right.
Erin Gust: Yeah. Except for death penalty case.
Judge Seymour: Except for death penalty cases. Yeah.
Yeah. But one of the things, one of the things, and I mentioned that Bingo case, one of the things that was fascinating over the years was the Native American cases we had, 'cause the jurisdiction is different and cases are different and it's just fascinating.
Erin Gust: That they are.
Well, is there anything else you want to share with the listeners or about your time on the 10th circuit or kind of reflecting on anything?
Judge Seymour: Thank you. Jimmy Carter.
Erin Gust: Thank you Jimmy Carter.
Judge Seymour: Yeah. [00:51:00] And , this has been a fabulous job. I've loved it. It's been, not that it hasn't been hard in at times and overwhelming at times, but, um, my great law clerks and.
Great help at home. The kids. Kids grew up
Erin Gust: Then there were grandkids.
Judge Seymour: I had grandkids, but no, that made it easier without kids at home.
Erin Gust: Great. Well, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to Tales from the 10th. This is your host, Aaron Gus, signing off. Goodbye.
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