Remember when the Bush administration got a thrashing over its flip flop over whether Jose Padilla should be deemed enemey combatant or not from an ultra conservative appeals court judge a few months ago? Well, that judge, J. Michael Luttig, is resigning his seat on the US Court of Appeals in Richmond Virginia, the WaPo reports:

Appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative jurist and a short-list Bush administration candidate for the Supreme Court, announced today that he is resigning from the bench to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of the Boeing Co.

Luttig, who sits on the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, wrote the most important appellate decision yet in support of the Bush administration's powers to detain individuals without recourse to ordinary legal protections. But he had a significant falling-out with the Justice Department late last year when he protested, in a follow-up opinion, what he suggested was the administration's inappropriate manipulation of the legal system in order to avoid a further Supreme Court test of the president's wartime authority.

His public thrashing of the Justice Department was known to have been deeply upsetting to political appointees in the department. [...]

In a telephone interview today, Luttig said his criticism of the administration "had nothing whatsoever to do with this decision, which is more far-reaching than any particular case."

The Post also notes that the move to Boeing could mean a doubling or tripling of an appeals court judge's salary.

Posted by Laura at May 10, 2006 12:36 PM