Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - 43
Courtesy of Judge Motz
advertising firm in New York. When she
found out she'd have to draw something for
the application, however, she took her law
boards instead. She was accepted to the
University of Virginia as
one of only two women in her class.
"I had been in women's schools my whole
life until law school, and then I was basically
still in a single-sex class," says Motz, who
excelled as a member of the law review and
moot court board. When she first became an
appeals court judge, one of her first cases
was on admitting women to Virginia
Military Institute, where she dissented from
the majority, arguing that the school
shouldn't be allowed to accept federal funds
if it discriminated against women. "I wrote
to my colleagues saying I knew the value of
a single-sex education better than anyone,"
she says. "A woman might not want to go to
VMI, but they should be entitled to." The
Supreme Court overturned the decision,
agreeing with Motz.
After law school, Motz practiced law both
in private practice and as an assistant state
attorney general for Maryland. While being
a judge brings with it perks of being able to
control the courtroom, she still misses the
simplicity of only having to argue one side
of the case. "A lawyer has the goal picked out
for him or her, and you either win or lose,"
"IF YOU ARE NOT
INTERESTED IN
CONSTITUTIONAL
QUESTIONS AS A
JUDGE, YOU ARE NOT
INTERESTED IN
BREATHING."
-Judge Diana Gribbon Motz '65
Motz says, "but the judge has to decide which
side is correct."
Since being appointed to the Fourth
Circuit Court of Appeals in Baltimore by
President Clinton in 1994, she has had to
weigh in on some thorny issues, including
having to set new precedents in rulings
around enemy combatants in the wake
of the September 11 terrorist attacks. At
the time, the Bush administration was
detaining terrorists without trial, holding
them in the grey area between prisoners
of war and civilian criminals. In 2007,
Motz ruled that indefinitely detaining
them would "have disastrous consequences
for the Constitution-and the country,"
a position eventually upheld by the Supreme
Court.
The most difficult cases for her are those
involving two areas: capital punishment and
employment law. "If someone is confined to
life imprisonment or [gets] the death penalty,
you really want to make sure they've been
given every constitutional right," she says.
Employment cases, meanwhile, are
difficult because of how much personally
is at stake. "People are very invested in their
jobs; it's their livelihood," she says. "On the
other hand, an employer has a right to run
a profitable business where people get along
with each other."
She has tried to make decisions by
gathering as much information as she can
beforehand through research, and, by
asking probing questions in the courtroom,
Motz has become known for the clarity of
her queries.
The life of an appeals court judge can
be isolating, with colleagues spread out from
Maryland to North Carolina. One sounding
board she does have close at home is her
husband, Frederick Motz, who was appointed as a district court judge by Ronald Reagan.
Despite the fact that they disagree on
politics, she says, "we almost never disagree
on the law. If you had a Venn diagram of
our views, we'd overlap about 95 percent
of the time."
Even though Motz is known as a liberal
voice on the court, her opinions are far from
ideological. In one recent case, she sided
with more conservative members of the
court in upholding the right for authorities
to track cell phones without a warrant. She
takes issue with the idea of judges being
pigeonholed as "liberal" or "conservative."
While she grew up in liberal DC and
practices in Maryland, a blue state, she
also attended Catholic school and a southern
law school, which exposed her to more
conservative viewpoints.
Judges are not tabula rasas, she says, but
she tries to put aside any biases she might
have when deciding a case. So what does
guide her in decision making? "I hope to
accomplish justice," she says. "I hope to give
people guidance for the future. And I hope
to get it right."
-Michael Blanding
VA S S A R Q U A R T E R lY
43
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017
Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - Cover1
Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - Cover2
Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - 2
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