Hi all:
Harvard Law School opened its doors to women in 1950. I was in the 9th
class with womenand graduated in 1962. Granted there were only about 18
of us out of 550 men. Since I am 67, I have to assume that Harriet Miers
would have been able to attend because she is younger. 1962 was the year
that Wall Street law firms finally noticed that women were on the scene
and two of my classmates and I were hired by Wall Street law firms as
their first women. I went to Cleary Gottlieb, another to Sherman and
Sterling, and another to Carter, Legyard and Milburn. That is a tale in
itself.
I'm not sure that where one goes to school is necessarily that
significant but I wanted to set the record straigh about HLS.
Mary Ann
>>> [log in to unmask] 10/13/2005 10:42 PM >>>
Well, I am a fall chicken, Frank, for sure, and grateful for it.
I grew up in a little town in Oklahoma where only a few people went out
of state to college if they went to college at all. I recall no one
going to Harvard. One guy I recall went to Princeton for a year, but he
flunked out; another went to Princeton and then an Ivy law school and
became a distinguished securities lawyer. When my older sister went to
Stanford in the mid-1950s, it was perfectly remarkable -- nobody
remembered anybody doing that, especially a girl.
When I graduated from high school (St. Stephen's Episcopal School,
right in your backyard in Austin, Texas, and home of more than one
ALSBer), most of the Ivy League and countless high quality liberal arts
colleges were closed to women (and others like Smith, Wellesley, etc.
closed to men). The "elite" options for private coeducation were slim
pickings: Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vandy, Chicago, Penn. But not
Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, etc.
So to the extent that path dependency is a factor in educational and
career development, those paths were padlocked to women of my
generation. Within a few years, of course, they opened up. Harvard and
Yale men began to notice that they had daughters.
And, well, for that matter, Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, St. Paul's
and most other old and elite private schools -- including the one John
Roberts attended from which he went to Harvard -- were closed to young
women. This is not to say that good education was not available to young
women, only that many of the most prestigious schools were not available
to young women.
Law school was different. I applied only to UT Austin because we lived
on an AF base in San Antonio, and then when, to my surprise, I turned
out to be OK at going to law school, I transferred to Stanford. The
women-friendly nature of Stanford was not irrelevant in that decision.
Now it does not follow that because one was categorically excluded that
one might have been admitted had one not been excluded. Ms. Miers (and
I) might not have been admitted to Harvard College had it been a women's
college! But my point is that John Robert's education -- and other
traditional elite schools -- would not have been available to Harriet
Miers. The absence of those credentials in her record is of little
significance.
I think people forget how new equal educational opportunity for women
is.
Ginny
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Ginny, were you really excluded from Harvard and Yale because of
gender? My class had a fair number of women. How old are you?
At 08:18 PM 10/13/2005, Ginny Maurer wrote:
Well, I started this out, not as a defense or an attack on Harriet
Miers, but to express my dismay at what I regard as attacks on her that
reflect inappropriate elitism and raw sexism -- the wrong issues to
consider in evaluating a potential Supreme.
Clearly, reasonable people can disagree about the extent of elitism
and/or sexism in these attacks.
We've moved on to new matters, some of which seem like non sequiturs.
For example, to concede that the vast majority of HLS JDs (and a
fortiori Yale Law School JDs), especially those on law review, are super
intelligent (as has been my experience) is not to concede that graduates
of lesser light places cannot be super intelligent and become superb
SCOTUS justices. Hugo Black comes to mind. We can feel very good about
Robert's grey matter because it got through several rarified siftings of
admissions and hirings offices (among other things). It does not follow
that we cannot feel good about the grey matter of persons who did not.
Keep in mind as well, that when Harriet Miers and I came out of high
school and applied to college, we were excluded from Harvard and Yale on
the grounds of having the wrong plumbing. It was a not insignificant
feat for a nice well-mannered middle class girl from Dallas to go to any
law school back then, especially since by then her parents were living
on disability payments. So give this lawyer a chance here. Also, SMU
ain't chopped liver.
I agree that thinking George Bush is the smartest person she has met
would be profoundly troubling if it were to be taken seriously. However,
she would not be the first nice middle class Texan to be given to
hyperbole. I dare say it is a cultural trait in that world, where people
say it to a lightpole. I'll bet Lady Bird said that of countless people.
Lyndon too, and you know Sam Rayburn did. Other such hyperbole include
being "the sweetest, most thoughtful thing [thang] I have ever known,"
"the cutest baby I have ever seen", etc. etc. Nothing to take to the
bank.
What I do find troubling is the role of gender and religion in the
appointment. Of course, I like the idea of replacing Justice O'Connor
with another woman, but I think the burden is heavy to prove her worthy
of those shoes, and that has not happened. It may or it may not. If not,
it is no favor to women, IMHO.
More troubling is the religious litmus test George says he applied, and
there is no way to satisfy this concern in hearings. Evidently he
categorically eliminated Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics and
people of other faiths for this seat, specifically to appoint an
evangelical protestant. I can see how he got there politically, but
where exactly do we go with this, and why?
Ginny
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Just for the record. There is a strong correlation between LSAT scores
and law school grades.
I would wage a great deal that there is a strong correlation between
membership on the Harvard Law Review and subsequent success in the law.
But of course it is true that being on HLR alone doesn't prove a lot
and certainly doesn't make one qualified for the USSC. But of course
John Roberts went on from HLR to serve in the Solicitor General's office
(a tough job to get), try many cases before the USSC with a high level
of success, and serve at least briefly on the DC Circuit. Those things
are why he was qualified for the USSC.
From what I can see, Harriet Meirs claim to fame is that she is a very
successful bureaucrat. She became president of the state bar, became
managing partner of her firm, and served George Bush. None of this
evidences intelligence greater than thousands of other candidates.
Maybe that's ok, maybe we need bureacratic skills more than intelligence
on the Court. But I would think that's the case for her, not that she's
demonstrably intelligent. She thinks George Bush is the smartest person
she has ever met. What does that tell you?
I think the best case for her may be that she is demonstrably not an
ideologue. She won't have a thumb on the scale when she decides most
cases (though I suspect she is overwhelmingly pro executive power).
At 07:10 PM 10/13/2005, David W. Opderbeck wrote:
<em>Well, I'm simply telling you that you don't know what you are
talking about. Period.</em>
John -- I guess if I'd been a Harvard Law Review Editor I'd be smart
enough to respond to this type of argument. Maybe something like, "I'm
made of rubber, you're made of glue, whatever you say bounces off of me
and sticks to you?"
Sure, HLS folks for the most part (aside from legacies and other
special admits) scored in the top percentiles of the LSAT. Yawn. So
they're good at taking a certain kind of standardized test. The
empirical data doesn't correlate LSAT scores with law school success,
much less with the skills required for actual lawying or judging. If
I'm looking for folks to answer standardized test questions about how
many people in the room are wearing blue hats after the people with
yellow hats leave, those HLS people will be the first ones I call. If
we need folks with emotional and moral intelligence as well as
analytical skills, I'll broaden my search.
And yes, the HLS law review folks got high grades in law school. A
little more impressive than LSAT scores, I guess, but again, do any of
us really believe the typical law school issue spotter is a great test
of practical intelligence? And at HLS, just about everybody gets good
grades; those who make law review may be just a bit more driven, or
lucky, than some of their colleagues.
No doubt, someone who makes law review at HLS probably is no mental
slouch; maybe we even are justified in giving them the initial benefit
of the doubt; but IMHO our profession places far too much emphasis on
this kind of credential in relation to how someone has actually
performed in the real world.
David W. Opderbeck
Assistant Professor of Business Law
Baruch College, City University of New York
(646) 312-3602
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Well, Iâ€*m simply telling you that you do not know what youyouâ€*re
talking about. Period.
John
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Why not? Harvard Law Review geeks, after all wrote darn bluebook.
What does any of that have to do with practicing law or deciding cases?
David W. Opderbeck
Assistant Professor of Business Law
BaruchCollege, CityUniversityof New York
(646) 312-3602
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You say: â€*I'd question, though, whether beieing an Editor of the
Harvard Law Review necessarily indicates anything other than the ability
to be a nit-picking Bluebooker.â€Â
Now, that is simply not true.
John
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Yes, Roberts fits the bill in many ways. I'd question, though, whether
being an Editor of the Harvard Law Review necessarily indicates anything
other than the ability to be a nit-picking Bluebooker.
I wonder if some of the discomfort with Miers's qualifications has to
do with our view of the Supreme Court Justice's role. Deep down, we
don't merely want smart, capable lawyers who can interpret and apply the
law. Instead, we want Philosopher Kings who can mold the intellectual
life of the Republic. The noise about "qualifications" and
"intelligence" regarding Miers, I think, is to some extent code for
one's judicial philosophy. This is true even for many on the right who
have been disappointed by the Miers nomination -- they don't really want
a technocrat Justice who knows how to handle a redwell full of briefs,
they want a movement intellectual ala Bork who can mold the way we
mortals think about the big questions of life. Maybe it would be good
for the institution if at least one of the Justicies is someone who's
been in the trenches for a while.
David W. Opderbeck
Assistant Professor of Business Law
BaruchCollege, CityUniversityof New York
(646) 312-3602
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I think the question is being missed and the sexism overplayed. Males
have been called mediocrities (Carswell) and females praised
(Ginsburg).
The issue is not whether Miers is a relatively intelligent woman, as
she obviously is. The question is whether she is exceptionally
intelligent. In Roberts case, he not only was a Harvard Law Review
editor, he was a very successful practitioner before the USSC. Then he
served on the DC Circuit. This puts him in a very small, very select
group that clearly demonstrates his aptitude. In Meirs case, she was a
managing partner of a large, but not top firm. There are hundreds of
people who could satisfy this qualification, and a lot of them have
other, higher achievements.
Now, she may be a perfectly good justice. But these slots come up
infrequently and I think there is an expectation that they should be
filled with the super-intelligent. I think that's the question.
At 11:09 AM 10/13/2005, Prenkert, Jamie D wrote:
Agreed that using elite schooling as a proxy for intelligence and
ability is dangerous. But, Iâ€*m unconvinced that at an Ivy education
would insulate Harriet Miers from the criticisms about her nomination or
questions of her intellect, which seem to me questions not of whether
sheâ€*s bright, but whether sheââ*¢â***s brilliant on the perceived
level of John Roberts (or other pootential nominees).
Two Ivy degrees for President Bush have done nothing to quash a
consistent drumbeat of criticism of his intellectual capacity (rightly
or wrongly), despite his professional/political accomplishments.
Jamie Darin Prenkert
Assistant Professor of Business Law
Kelley School of Business, IndianaUniversity
1309 East Tenth Street, Room 233
Bloomington, Indiana47405
Ph: 812-856-5069
Fax: 812-856-4695
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All this talk of Miers not being "smart enough" bugs me at a visceral
level. If Miers had gone to Harvard and Yale, and then had gone on to
do everything she did in her professional life, we wouldn't be having
this discussion about her intellect. (Judicial experience is another
matter.) It seems to me that the "intellect" questions relate only to
her paper credentials and not to what she's actually achieved. Why does
this bother me so viscerally? Well, I didn't go to Harvard or Yale
either (I did go to NYULawSchool, but that was for an LL.M., which is
what dumb people like me do to try and look smart). And, despite some
pretty respectable professional achievements since law school, when I
decided to try to become an academic, the schools I attended 20 years
ago were a huge liability. Thankfully, everything seems to be working
out ok, but the extent to which one's performance on a silly
standardized entrance exam decades ago (and/or one's ability to afford
more "prestigious" schooling) influences the perception of
"intelligence" in the legal profession is absurd.
David W. Opderbeck
Assistant Professor of Business Law
BaruchCollege, CityUniversityof New York
(646) 312-3602
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Taking a pass on whether Dowd is being unfair, she should at least be
chastised for being unoriginal. Sheâ€ââ*¢s simply cribbing Harriet
Miersââ***s Blog!!!, whhich has been up since about 5 minutes after the
nomination was announced. Because of that timing, it strikes me as
funny, if broad, parody rather than piling on in a suspiciously elitist
and/or sexist way. (Iâ€*m not endorsing the argument that
Dowdâ€Ã¢â***s article or other criticisms of
Miers are, in fact, based in elittism and sexism, I just thought Iâ€*d
point out DowdÃwdâ€*s literary â€*crimeâ€imeââ** of being
derivative, and poorly derivative at that.)
â€*OMG!!! I totalllly posted on the ALSB Talk listserv! Computers
rock!!!â€*Â
Jamie
Jamie Darin Prenkert
Assistant Professor of Business Law
KelleySchoolof Business, IndianaUniversity
1309 East Tenth Street, Room 233
Bloomington, Indiana47405
Ph: 812-856-5069
Fax: 812-856-4695
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Huh? The notes, birthday cards, etc. are from the Texas State Library
and Archives. That's the source of the correspondence, but the
correspondence is not the source of the matter stated, nor does it,
IMHO, affirm the truth of the matter stated.
It would not surprise me greatly to learn that Oliver Wendell Holmes
sent birthday cards and wrote thank you notes to people who did
thoughtful things for him. Or that he they offered personal
encouragement to people they liked and supported. In short, what is the
big deal, and why does this correspondence make it fair game to
characterize a 60+ year old lawyer, a senior partner in a major law
firm, a former president of the Texasbar, and counsel to the president
as a little girl?
To go a step further, it is clear enough to me that Cheney, Rummy, etc.
are W syncophants, but you do not find them belittled, literally, as
little children.
Not that there is anything wrong with little children.
G.
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TexasStateLibrary and Archives Commission. That's the source Dowd
cites. You'll have to finally concede, Ginny, if George W. proved you
need no talent
to become president, Miers proves you need none to be named a S.C.
justice.
If you can validate Dowd's source, what more would it take to conclude
that
this starry-eyed partisan is a danger to the Republic?
=========
Well, yes, certainly have to give her that. Maureen Dowd ain't dumb or
inarticulate.
Also, I just checked in on the Drudge Report and read the
Harriet-George correspondence to which Dowd undoubtedly alludes, and
that places it in better context for me.
Nonetheless, I read every single thank-you note, birthday card, and
professional correspondence, and still see nothing to ridicule. I just
see a gracious, polite, well-mannered person.
Ginny
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Regardless, when you can work starry eyed and stare decisis into the
same sentence, you've really done something.
Robert
----- Original Message -----
From: Ginny Maurer
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Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: Supreme Court Nominee
OK, Bill, my silence lasted all of 10 seconds!
Maureen Dowd should have her mouth washed out with soap, or a strong
detergent, or maybe just lye.
Is anyone else tired of the rampant elitism and sexism with which Miers
is being received?
And this is not to be confounded with whether I think she is an
appropriate nominee to the Court. I am skeptical but waiting to see
whether she blows away the judiciary committee in the hearings or
whether her nomination implodes during the hearings. Seems to me either
could happen. To hear critics of the right or the left, male or female,
diss her for not going to Harvard or Yale or make fun of her for being a
woman is disheartening in the least. The American deserves better.
Well, maybe I should rethink that last assertion.
Ginny [silent no longer but still embarrassed]
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Professor Emerson, Here's one other entry you may want to add to add
to your survey:
The New York Times
"To Sir With Love"
Maureen Dowd
p. A27
Wed, October 12, 2005
"How can I thank you, Sir? I never, never expected the Supreme
Court. Phat! I hope Clarence doesn't make me watch 'Debbie Does
Dallas" again. That movie is so anti-Texan! I miss you already!
But now I will be able to serve your interests -- and those of your
family -- forever and ever. If there's another recount that you need
help with, count on me. They say I don't have experience, but I've
had the experience of polishing the boots of the wisest ruler since
Solomon. I may not know stare decisis, but I know when to be starry
eyed. I await your instructions, Master."
Source: TexasStateLibrary and Archives Commission.
TAKE ME NOW LORD.
**********************************************************
Frank Cross
McCombsSchoolof Business
The Universityof Texasat Austin
1 University Station B6000
Austin, TX78712-1178
**********************************************************
Frank Cross
McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station B6000
Austin, TX 78712-1178
**********************************************************
Frank Cross
McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station B6000
Austin, TX 78712-1178
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