Three federal judges in Texas recently learned that juggling a full docket while going to school is no easy task.
U.S. District Judge Jason Pulliam of the Western District of Texas, U.S. District Judge Robert Schroeder of the Eastern District of Texas and U.S. District Judge Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas all completed Duke University’s master of laws program this year. Judge Brown declined to speak about her experience, but Judge Pulliam and Judge Schroeder explained to The Texas Lawbook what they got out of the program and discussed challenges they had to overcome.
The two-year program for judicial officers requires students to spend one month at Duke University’s campus in North Carolina for two summers.
Judges from all over the country and internationally participate in the program. There were 14 states represented in the graduating class, along with judges from South Korea and Chile. Texas had the most representation with three judges participating.
Judge Pulliam described working two full-time jobs as a “unique challenge”.
He said he talked with his staff in great detail once he knew he was participating in the program, and prioritized handling as many pleas and sentencing on his criminal docket for individuals who were detained as possible.
“I wanted to clean up my docket as much as possible. I worked with our magistrate judges on some of our cases, and they helped handle some of the cases in which individuals were detained,” Judge Pulliam said.
For his civil docket, they developed a system for him to review briefs after class.
“After class, I would come back to my apartment and go to work, and so I would start my workday. Then answer emails, review orders, and that’s just how we handled it,” Judge Pulliam said.
Judge Schroeder said it required significant coordination and planning to manage his docket while participating in the program.
“We packed in a lot more hearings in the month or two before I was gone, and in the month or two after I got back, than we normally would have,” Judge Schroeder said.
He added that they did several remote hearings while he was in North Carolina as well.
“I work with some fantastic people, and everybody went above and beyond to try to help me [while] away,” Judge Schroeder said. “All of my colleagues in the Eastern District work very hard, and I certainly respect that. I felt like I had to go the extra mile to make sure I was pulling my weight.”
Judge Pulliam said he heard about the program from other judges, but when he took a look at the type of classes that are part of the program — which range from writing to neuroscience to constitutional interpretation — he applied.
“I have a never-ending goal and quest to be the absolute best judge I can be, and I thought it’d be a great opportunity for me to improve my legal and judicial skills,” he said. “I think I did that with the program.”
Judge Pulliam said his favorite courses were constitutional interpretation, statutory interpretation and the Second Amendment.
For Judge Schroeder, getting his masters of law was something he had been thinking about since he took the bench a decade ago.
“I’m always up for a new challenge, and the coursework we were required to do was very comprehensive across a lot of subject matters,” Judge Schroeder said. “Although I knew it was going to be a whole lot of work, which it was, I knew I would enjoy it. And I really did. And if given the chance to do it over again, I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
The class he enjoyed the most, he said, was judicial history.
As part of the program, the judges choose a thesis topic to research and study, and write a paper on.
Judge Pulliam chose the Second Amendment as his thesis topic. Specifically, the new Bruen approach.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen made a significant impact on the Second Amendment in establishing a new framework for evaluating gun control laws.
Judge Pulliam said he had a lot of motions filed in both criminal and civil cases following the decision.
“It was our job to figure out whether the law is under the new methodological framework, whether those laws were constitutional,” Judge Pulliam said.
He added it’s a topic he has been fascinated with, having written his law review paper on the Second Amendment while earning his J.D. from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.
Judge Pulliam said he is monitoring the impact of the decision. He said he doesn’t plan on publishing his paper soon, but would like to eventually.
“I wanted to, at least from my perspective, provide some guidance about how to navigate that new terrain,” Judge Pulliam said.
Being a lover of history, Judge Schroeder wrote his thesis on two judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit who were brothers.
Judge Schroeder clerked for Judge Richard Arnold, who was chief judge of the Eighth Circuit.
Judge Richard Arnold and his brother, Judge Morris Arnold, served on the bench together for 12 years from 1992 to 2004. While Richard died in 2004, Judge Morris still serves as a senior judge for the Eighth Circuit.
Judge Schroeder said they are the only brothers to serve together on the federal bench. He said he wanted to look at the cases they worked on together — all 409 cases.
“These two brilliant judges, so well respected throughout the federal judiciary, were raised by the same parents, in the same home, [and]had the same educational opportunities,” he said. “They ended up with slightly different political philosophies and experiences.”
Richard Arnold ran for Congress as a Democrat twice and was nominated by democratic presidents for the federal district court and then the federal appellate bench. Morris Arnold is a Republican who was actively involved in the party and was chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas. He was also nominated by two Republican presidents for the federal district court and federal appellate bench.
“It was interesting to me, having been raised by the same parents, who were themselves incredibly well educated and well traveled, very smart people, how they ended up with slightly different political philosophies, then ended up on the same court, and how they looked at different legal issues differently,” Schroeder said.
He added that the majority of the 409 cases they worked on together in 12 years were three-judge panels. He said about 75 of those cases were en banc.
Judge Schroeder read all 409 cases and summarized them, and looked at where the brothers agreed and disagreed, and their reasoning. He said he might publish his thesis paper eventually, but is still working on an additional section.
Having the opportunity to get to know judges from across the country was informative, Judge Schroeder said.
“A big part of a trial judge’s job is just to try to keep the trains running on time. I learned a lot about how other judges do that, also, in addition to our regular coursework,” he said.
Both Judges Pulliam and Schroeder attended the graduation ceremony and walked across the stage in May.