[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 132 (Monday, July 27, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4513-S4514]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING STEPHEN D. SUSMAN

  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, on the day that we are remembering our dear 
friend and colleague John Lewis, ``someone who got in good trouble, 
someone who got in the way,'' I rise to join with my colleague from the 
State of Rhode Island to offer tribute to a dear friend who also knew 
how to get in good trouble and get in the way.
  Our friend Steve Susman of Houston, TX, at age 79, passed away on 
July 14 after sustaining serious injuries from a cycling accident and 
suffering from COVID-19. Steve will be remembered by all he inspired as 
one of the greatest trial attorneys ever in the United States. Steve is 
someone who, with incredible skill, prepared painstakingly, mastering 
the facts, so that he could back up every single thing he said in front 
of a jury.
  When it came to courtrooms, it is said that Steve was the smartest 
guy in the room, but he also believed deeply in teaching young lawyers 
trial skills. And unlike many famous and leading trial attorneys, he 
was happy to share the spotlight with younger lawyers--in fact, 
insisted on it. Two of those younger lawyers happen to be friends of 
mine from law school, Jonathan Ross and Andrew Golub, who first 
introduced me to Steve and gave me the joy of getting to know him and 
all who practiced with him.
  Steve was passionate about law and justice. He spent his entire life 
thinking and talking about and working for ways to improve the system 
of civil justice in America. Motivated by a deep passion for the law, 
he fought to improve our system and was a crusader. Respected broadly 
for his leadership and his ability to achieve justice for his clients, 
Steve is someone who left a lasting impact on his community and our 
country.
  His incredible generosity to Yale University, to the University of 
Texas Law School, to the NYU Law School Civil Jury Project, and to the 
Anti-Defamation League, among many others, will be remembered for years 
and years to come. Steve had boundless energy, deep affection for his 
family, and a passionate commitment to the law.
  This is a difficult time for his family, his friends, his colleagues, 
and his loved ones. I want to give my special condolences to his wife, 
Ellen; his children, Harry, Stacy, Whitney, and Amanda; his brother, 
Tommy; and his eight grandchildren. I share with them my deepest and 
sincere condolences in the passing of this lion of the law. We will not 
see his like again.
  I yield the floor to my colleague from Rhode Island.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from 
Delaware here to offer a Senate floor farewell to our friend Steve 
Susman. He was a very big personality, but unlike a lot of very big 
personalities, it was never all about him. He wasn't pushing people 
away with the size of his personality. He was enveloping them with the 
size of his personality, and I was one who was fortunate to be so 
enveloped. We became friends, and I will miss him.
  To Ellen and to their children, to his brother, Tom, who gave such 
beautiful remarks at the electronic service for Steve the other day, I 
want to say thank you.
  I just want to tell one story, but the story will not make sense if 
you don't understand what a big deal Steve Susman was. If you don't 
understand that he was the main partner of Susman Godfrey, which by 
many lights is the best and biggest litigation firm in the United 
States of America. His name is on that firm. His name is on thousands 
of pleadings filed by that firm in cases all around the country. He is 
a person

[[Page S4514]]

who had gravitas as a lawyer and who lived before judges and needed to 
make sure he kept their good will and respect.
  Now, for a lot of people, that would have meant taking no chances--
not for Steve. I have a practice, from time to time, in the Senate, of 
writing Supreme Court amicus briefs as an amicus curiae--a friend of 
the court and not the party. The Court rules allow me both to express 
their views on the law and on the background facts in cases--those 
people are called friends of the court--and I have filed those briefs 
over and over again. They are not the usual friend-of-the-court brief. 
Let's just say that.
  I believe that as a U.S. Senator, I best show my respect for the 
Court and the Justices by being candid with them about where I think 
they have made grievous mistakes or where they have been led astray.
  So these are not your ordinary briefs. This one was about the 
Consumer Financial Protection Board, and I focused on the favor-seeking 
interests that caused the underlying 2008 meltdown and how those same 
favor-seeking interests were interested in undoing the Consumer 
Financial Protection Board so they could get back to the same mischief 
again. I talked about the dangers of corruption from those interests. 
Well, those are powerful interests. To talk about them in that way in 
an amicus brief is not nothing.
  Now, the brief talks about the fake notion of freedom that some 
espouse, which is, for instance, the freedom to pollute as opposed to 
the freedom to have a clean river free of the pollution. That freedom--
the freedom to harm consumers--that freedom is a fake and wrong 
freedom, and we said so quite clearly in this brief. We talked about 
the value of regulation that we have clean air and water, that we have 
safe pharmaceuticals, that we have an orderly economy, and that people 
are not cheated in stock swindles because we have a regulatory system 
that has knowledgeable people in it who devote their careers to looking 
out for the public against very clever and often wily special 
interests.
  We push back hard on the notion that deregulation is a great asset. 
In fact, we pointed out that the failures of regulation have almost 
always occurred when the regulated interest got too much control over 
the regulator and got into the mischief business through the regulator, 
but honest regulation has been almost always a virtue for our country.
  We went after this thing called the unitary executive theory and 
showed how it had been cooked up in corporate rightwing hothouses. This 
thing had come through like an assembly line of billionaire-funded 
rightwing phony front groups to propagate itself out into the world and 
tried to get some legitimacy as a legal theory, and we went through the 
whole history of that. That is pretty rough stuff because people put a 
lot of money into trying to cook up this unitary executive theory.
  Last week, we pointed out that the judicial selection process that is 
going on around here right now is directly related to the deregulation 
process. The judges are being picked by special interests so they will 
rule against regulation and give special interests a break and they can 
pollute and cheat and harm people to a greater degree than they would 
with strong regulators. That was a point that we made in this brief. 
And, by the way, I quoted Trump's legal counsel, Don McGahn, who 
actually said this. It is not like we were making it up. He called them 
two sides of the same coin--fill the court with judges who hate 
regulation and let the big industries deregulate and have more freedom 
to harm.
  And, finally, we did something that I have not done before in a 
brief, but because there is so much special interest money floating 
around in the Supreme Court and because there is so much mischief 
swirling around it, we actually put an appendix into the brief at the 
end that looked at some of the other amici who had showed up to show 
how often they were funded by the same secretive groups and how many of 
them were basically tentacles of the same creature, and we backed that 
up with research showing one by one how they had been funded and 
sourced thoroughly.
  This was not your usual Supreme Court brief. Why do I dwell on this 
brief? Because here is the name on it: Brief of Amici Curiae, U.S. 
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono in Support 
of Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae, Stephen D. Susman, Counsel of Record. 
Like the thousands of pleadings that bear Steve Susman's name, so did 
this brief.
  He took a chance to sign on a brief that was written the way we wrote 
this one. He did not mind. He knew that what we were saying was right. 
He was willing to put his name behind that, even though it might have 
caused blowback because that is the kind of man he was, and I will miss 
that. We have too little of that in this country these days, and, 
Steve, God speed.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COONS. So our respect to Steve Susman, a man of rare courage.
  With that, I yield the floor.

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