So what if the judges in the 6th Circuit can’t get along, and are forced to stand on opposite sides of the room based on the party of the President who appointed them.  The jets and sharks did the same thing.  Of course, they could dance really well, but then, Judge George C. Paine II knows how to shake it pretty well himself.

Adam Liptak’s  Sidebar talks about the Belle Meade Club, that special place in Nashville where the powerful can let their hair down.  If they have hair.

The Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville has about 600 voting members. None of them are women, and none of them are black. But one of them is a federal judge.

Isn’t a guy allowed to hang with his homies?  He works hard all day, wearing a robe, deciding important stuff, signing a lot of papers and listening to his clerks tell him what’s up with what.  Is that not enough for you people?  It is for all the Republic appointees on the 6th Circuit.

The ruling opens windows on two odd institutions. One is a fading country club that was once an arbiter of success in Nashville’s social, political and business circles. The other is the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which sits in Cincinnati and is surely the most dysfunctional federal appeals court in the nation.

“The record before this court paints a picture of Belle Meade as an old boys’ club that considers and admits Caucasian male applicants on a different basis than African-American and female applicants,” Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. wrote in a dissent from last month’s ruling. “We federal judges must sometimes make sacrifices for the honor of the office we hold, and the judge’s membership in Belle Meade should have been one of them.”

Here’s a shocker for those of you not attuned to the country club life.  Clubs used to be restricted.  That’s the nice way to say that you, and I, can’t be a member.  A member can bring us in, where we can play a round of golf, enjoy a gin and tonic and eat the crab salad, but then we leave.  Even their wives aren’t allowed in the Men’s Grill, that special place where guys can relax in the company of other men to discuss important man things without the constant yammering of women.

But when one of the guys wears a black robe to work (as opposed to robes of other colors, which implicate different concerns), it emits an unpleasant odor.  Sure, we know that the wonderful platitudes carved over the courthouse doors are just for show, but we also know that they don’t have enough uniformed officers with guns to run around the country enforcing their judgments.  If the public doesn’t believe that the judges are worth heeding, things could get ugly.  One more topic of discussion over hors d’oeuvres.

As Judge Cole says, albeit without the forcefulness one would hope from a dissenter, there are some sacrifices one makes to enjoy a lifetime seat on the big bench and have people laugh at your jokes even when they aren’t funny.  You take a salary that would have been refused by a first year associate just a few short years ago.  You don’t use epithets on the record.  And you do not become a member of a club that excludes people of other color or gender. 

Why?  Because anyone who takes comfort in a club that discriminates based on race or sex tacitly adopts that discrimination as his own.  But the place has a great seventh hole, and what about that par 3?  Yeah, that’s tough.  The other members may be great guys, important guys, guys just like you and with whom you can comfortably talk and share.  It may have facilities that you enjoy, and very good food (not likely, but possible).  It may be your home away from home.

But you have taken an oath to dispense whatever it is your dispensing from the bench equally to all, and your life sans robe cannot fly in the face of that oath.

The decision to squint and pretend that the Belle Meade Country Club wasn’t really restricted went straight down political lines.

“Reasonable minds could — and indeed do — differ on the question of whether this club engages in invidious discrimination,” she wrote. But Judge Paine, the bankruptcy judge, had “engaged in long and sincere efforts to integrate the club” and so was blameless, Judge Batchelder wrote.

But even such energetic judges must resign, the commentary says, if the practices do not cease “as promptly as possible” and “in all events within two years.”

Judge Paine joined the club in 1978.  In 1995, he wrote a letter to the club asking it to increase it’s diversity. Around 2001, he sponsored a black man for membership. The man was dinged.  What more could you ask of this poor man?  Consider his handicap and the number of cocktails that died for his efforts.

That this was a purely political decision was painfully obvious, and a clear indication of the dysfunction within the 6th Circuit.  If you have any doubt, consider Judge Merritt:

In a follow-up e-mail, Judge Paine said he found it “remarkably hypocritical” that the Sixth Circuit had singled him out for investigation when two other judges had been members of the club. One was a federal district judge who has since retired. The other was Judge Gilbert S. Merritt, a liberal member of the appeals court and an honorary, nonvoting member of Belle Meade.

In an interview, Judge Merritt acknowledged that Belle Meade used to discriminate against blacks. But these days, he said, minority members would be welcome if they could only be persuaded to apply. “Maybe they would not feel comfortable,” he said.

Unlike Judge Paine, Just Merritt is a nonvoting member, which is the price one pays for being a liberal.  His job would be to stand out front and wave at black men driving by, hoping to attract them to membership and make them feel comfortable.