Roger Pilon has already paid tribute in these columns to D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen F. Williams (19362020), arevered friend and inspirational figure to many of us here at Cato, and agiant of administrative law whose scholarly and writing interests extended to such farflung fields as preRevolutionary Russian history. Some other appreciations: Fredrick Kunkle/Washington Post, Jonathan Adler first and second, Ben Wittes (friendship began after Wittes wrote something unfair about the judge, who characteristically overlooked it), Aaron Nielson (noting that Williams was famous for the regularity with which his clerks went on to become respected legal academics), Notice and Comment multiple authors, Nathaniel Zelinsky.

In his post linked above Aaron Nielson hails Judge Williams as a man of courage who was not afraid to speak out to what he perceived as threats to liberty. Nielson cites Williamss2016 opinion in alabor relations case, HTH v. NLRB, which hinged in part on the circumstances under which the National Labor Relations Board can order managers of acompany that has violated labor law to read aloud to workers the terms of anotice drafted by the Board, reciting past violations and promising to sin no more. Williams cited the words of thenJudge Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an earlier (1983) D.C. Circuit case, Conair v. NLRB, objecting to apersonalized order requiring anamed executive to read such anotice (I would not single out the president [of the company] here, or any other named individual, hand him lines, and make him sing.) Alas, Ginsburgs view did not prevail in that case, and her words came in adissent. In the 2016 case, which raised similar issues, Williams wrote:

Its worth pausing to think briefly why so many of our distinguished predecessors have used the terms humiliating and degrading, ignominy, and confession of sins for amandatory readingespecially by anamed perpetratornot to mention why thenJudge Ginsburg acknowledged that an order of this sort would occasion no surprise in asystem in which those who offend against state regulation must confess and repent as ameans of selfcorrection, or to educate others. Id. at 1401. For those familiar with 20th century history, such an order conjures up the system of criticismselfcriticism devised by Stalin and adopted by Mao. Criticism generally took the form of an attack on the target by his or her peers at ameeting with fellow workers, spouting claims fed them by powerful members of the Communist party (on pain of themselves being tagged enemies of the people), and then regurgitated by the target (selfcriticism) in the hopes that full confession might avert dispatch to the gulag, torture or execution.

What is the subtext communicated by the sort of scene the Board would mandate? What is communicated to the assembled workers and the perpetrator himself? You see before you one of your managers, who normally has aresponsibility to make important choices as to your work. But who is he? Not merely is he alawbreaker, but he is apathetic creature who can be forced to spout lines some government officials have put in his mouth. He is not even aparrot, who can choose when to speak; he is apuppet who speaks on command words that he may well abominate. We have successfully turned him into apathetic semblance of ahuman being. Of course, one may say, here it is just that the mighty have fallen; he was alawbreaker. But fallen so low? Fallen to acondition that denies his autonomy? Cf. United States v. Gementera, 379F.3d 596, 611 (9th Cir. 2004) (Hawkins, J., dissenting) (saying that the sole purpose of asentence requiring aconvicted mail thief to stand outside apost office for eight hours wearing asandwich board stating, I stole mail. This is my punishment was to turn him into amodern day Hester Prynne).

Liberty was asafer thing with Judge Williams standing guard for it.

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Judge Stephen Williams On Forced Public Confessions - Cato Institute