Published July 15, 2026
Lost in the Blanche drama, the Senate on Tuesday confirmed Donald Trump’s latest nominee for the Second Circuit, Matt Schwartz. Schwartz is going to be a great judge. A partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, he was one of Justice Alito’s first clerks.
Our mutual Princeton professor, Robby George, tweeted out: “Congratulations to my star former student Matthew Schwartz on his confirmation as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Great news for the country. (This should have been a 100-0 vote, but we live in the times in which we live.)”
The confirmation came on a 50–45 party-line vote. We can talk about whether it should have been 100–0 but the fact is that Schwartz is a superbly qualified pick, the sort of which you’d see in any competent Republican administration.
That didn’t prevent him from having his opponents, though. Take, for example, a group called Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG). It urged people to send spam letters to the Senate opposing Schwartz. This is because “Trump has nominated his personal attorney to a lifetime seat on the Second Circuit — the court that hears appeals from the Southern District of New York.” You see, Schwartz is “a loyalty appointment to a court the president expects to insulate him from accountability.” They also rattle off a few cases where Schwartz has advanced conservative positions.
I had never heard of this group, but apparently they’re also active in opposing Todd Blanche for attorney general.
That’s fine, of course. This is a free country, and people can do what they like. There’s no shortage of left-wing groups opposing judges and nominees, and apparently L4GG is one of them. Again I had never heard of them, so I question how effective they are, but that also doesn’t stop activist groups from proliferating and fundraising.
What’s interesting is the leadership of L4GG. Looking at the board, there’s a partner at the national law firm BakerHostetler. There’s a “Global Program Director and Pro Bono Counsel” for Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the world’s largest and most profitable law firm. There’s a managing director at the giant bank BNY Mellon.
These companies all have business before the Department of Justice. Why are they going after the acting attorney general? As I noted at the outset of the Trump administration, it can be hard for law firms to square activism against the administration with having a good reputation before it. But perhaps that’s just politics and is what it is.
More surprising is going after a Second Circuit nominee. BNY Mellon (the BNY stands for Bank of New York) is in the Second Circuit. Kirkland is a corporate giant and often in that court representing clients. BakerHostetler has grown well beyond its Ohio roots to do the same. Is it really prudent for their partners or senior employees to be governing an organization that’s trashing a Second Circuit nominee?
There has long been a weird disconnect between the elite of the legal profession and actual corporate political interest. Well-known liberals charge international conglomerates $3,000 an hour to, say, defend their child-slavery practices overseas and salve their consciences by funneling some of those profits into left-wing pro bono work. I’m sure it’s the commitment to left-wing pro bono that has these firms working with L4GG.
But is it in their clients’ best interests to be aiding and abetting attacks on a Second Circuit nominee for being, in part, pro-corporate in his litigation work? I suspect not. I wonder if they’ll notice.
Michael A. Fragoso is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture Program, where he writes and speaks on issues relating to the law, the federal judiciary, and Congress. An attorney in private practice, he served in all three branches of the federal government, including most recently as chief counsel to the Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY). His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy: Per Curiam, and elsewhere.
