Sid Thomas
Clair Johnson wrote a fine profile of Judge Sidney Thomas last month, a week before he came chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Today, the San Jose Mercury News ran a profile of Thomas, coming to pretty much the same conclusions as the Montanans who know him well—that Thomas will be a relatively low profile but effective leader for the court.
In the words of one of his former law clerks: “There’s no drama. He’s not an ideologically driven person. He really cares about the record; we were deciding cases, not making policy.”
Thomas himself says he probably won’t be as flamboyant as his predecessor, Alex Kozinski, best remembered for having posted sexually explicit material on his publicly accessible website, though he deserves to be best-known for his triumphant appearance on “The Dating Game.”
Anyway, all indications are that Judge Thomas will do us proud. And I have to add this: His wife, Martha Sheehy, has long been the Gazette’s attorney, and she was always so good that you almost felt sorry for the government officials hapless enough to confront her in court. There are some interesting power couples from Montana—Max Baucus and Melodee Hanes spring to mind—but the Thomas-Sheehy pair might be the most formidable.
