Elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Bar Council Quarterly, we recognize Judge Skretny’s retirement after 35 years on the Western District of New York bench. We write separately to highlight Judge Skretny’s interactions with President George H.W. Bush, who nominated him in 1990.

Judge Skretny vividly recalls President George H. W. Bush offering him the nomination. President Ronald Reagan had begun a tradition of phoning judicial nominees from Air Force One, and President Bush continued to do so. Judge Skretny was told that President Bush had taken his nomination file on Air Force One and that, if his nomination was going forward, he should expect a call from President Bush over the weekend. He waited patiently all weekend, but no call came. So, disappointed, Judge Skretny headed into work on Monday morning. About ten minutes after he left home, a phone call came into his house, which Judge Skretny’s then-elementary-school daughter answered, and abruptly said, “goodbye.” Judge Skretny’s wife, Carol, nervously asked who had called. “I dunno” was the only answer. It had been the President of the United States.

Fortunately, President Bush called back. This time, when the call came through, Judge Skretny’s officemates jammed into his office. “It was,” Judge Skretny explained, like “trying to speak from a can of sardines.” President Bush told Judge Skretny that he had been studying how despots, like Hitler and Mussolini, accumulated power. President Bush said he learned that a common tactic was undermining judges. President Bush observed, “I think it’s critically important that someone as prominent as a federal district court judge give the assurance that he or she will exercise judicial independence in decision-making without any influence by politics, personal or professional.” President Bush thus asked Judge Skretny for one thing: “a solemn promise to exercise independent decision-making.” Judge Skretny was more than happy to make that promise and gave President Bush his word. President Bush asked no further questions and made no further demands. He told Judge Skretny, “That’s all I want from you, and now I will nominate you.”

President Bush later thanked Judge Skretny for keeping his promise to act independently. When Judge Skretny was stepping down from his role as chief judge to assume senior status, President Bush wrote Judge Skretny to thank him for fulfilling his promise. President Bush praised Judge Skretny for the one and only attribute he had asked him to bring to the job: not loyalty to any party or partisan position, but only “integrity” on the bench. President Bush wrote, “I am proud or you. I know your service as a senior judge will continue at the same high level.” 

Upon taking inactive status, Judge Skretny shared an abbreviated version of this story with members of the bench and bar in the Western District of New York. He marveled to those assembled: “Only in America.” 

Judge Skretny kindly shared a copy of the letter from President Bush with the Federal Bar Council Quarterly, which is printed below.