Amir Ali joined the D.C. Federal District Court just weeks before Trump took office. It’s been tumultuous ever since.
In his first weeks as a federal judge in Washington last December, Amir Ali was surprised to learn that the job didn’t come with a robe. Where was he supposed to get one? He had to order his own, and it would take months to arrive.
There was much that Ali, as a brand-new member of the federal bench, did not yet know. A lot of it would be covered at a five-day orientation program for new appointees hosted by the Federal Judicial Center and affectionately referred to as “baby judges school,” but that takes place only a few times a year, and the next session was months away. Ali would have to learn the job by doing it and from senior judges on his court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. When word got around that he was waiting for his robe, he found one on his desk with a note from a former chief judge: “Yours as long as you need it.”
The D.D.C., as the court that Ali joined is called, has one of the highest profiles of the 94 federal District Courts across the country. Its location makes the D.D.C. the frequent starting place for suits against the federal government and thus the site of numerous historic showdowns. It was D.D.C. judges, in the 1970s, who ruled that the Pentagon Papers could be published and ordered Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes.