Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Dolliver’s office was next to Floyd Hicks and they had coffee every morning there. On
Monday mornings they would talk about 60 Minutes and football games. And Floyd would
call me and say, “You’ve gotta come up. You’ve gotta come up.” So I would go and be
bored while they talked all the sports. But we got to know each other very well in this
kind of social, casual attitude. We didn’t talk cases at that time. We talked our cases at
the conference right after the arguments. And occasionally one of them would come in
and want to talk about an opinion that I had written or that they had written. But Fred
Dore was the only justice who ever said, “If you’ll vote for me on this case, I’ll vote for your
opinion on this case.” I said, “Fred, this isn’t politics; this isn’t the Legislature. It doesn’t
work that way.” He was the only one that ever subscribed to “D” and “R.”
Hughes: C.Z. Smith tells some similar stories …
So the layperson who imagines what it’s like to be a Supreme Court justice on the court of
last resort probably has it wrong? I sort of imagined that you’d wander down the hall and
just talk about stuff. “Gee, Bob, what are your thoughts on this sort of thing?”
Dimmick: No, you really didn’t. You were on your own. You were in your office with your
law clerk and you were writing your own opinions. And then once they were circulated
occasionally somebody would say something, but not often. It was all done in writing.
Hughes: Tell me about the conference. Your opinions are done and then you conference….
Dimmick: No, no, this prior. You’re assigned a case to write a bench memo. And you’re
supposed to have strong feelings on how it should happen. And you circulate the bench
memo. This is before oral argument. Then somebody else would say, “Oh, I don’t go for
that.” And so they would circulate.
Hughes: So these are talking points?
Dimmick: Yes. So they would circulate a little bench memo on the dissent. Then we would
go in – sometimes they didn’t even bother — but we’d get it there, listen to oral argument
and then the person would be the presenter – the judge who had had the case assignment.
And we would say “This is what we think.” And then somebody would say, “Excuse me.
That’s not the way it should be.” And then they would talk, talk, talk, talk.
Hughes: This is so interesting. It’s great to hear you explain these things, and let me pay
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