Rodricks: Baltimore attorney decries ‘absence of simple human decency’ in House vote rejecting honor for Black judge

“In my life,” Eric Schuster said, “except for my father and father-in-law, there has been no man I respected more than Judge Joseph W. Hatchett.” Schuster is an attorney with Funk & Bolton in Baltimore, specializing in financial law and, specifically, creditor rights. In 1983, after he graduated from Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, he scored a clerkship with Hatchett, who at the time sat in Tallahassee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. (Judges on the 11th Circuit review and rule on cases from Florida, Georgia and Alabama.)