Antonin Scalia, Harvard, Harvard Law Review, John Bash, New York Times, Supreme Court Clerks, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 7.8.07: Seven on Earth

By  
on

We’re posting this on Friday the 13th — hardly anyone’s lucky day. But last Saturday was 7-7-07, and couples all over the world rushed to the altar (and the gambling tables) to take advantage of the auspicious date.
And sevens weren’t the only thing we saw multiples of in the NYT weddings section. We’ve got four grooms this week, and all four are named John!
If that gives you chills, just wait till you check out their credentials.
Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Zina Gelman and John Bash III
2. John Alexander and John Lipsey
3. Anne Ho and John Griggs III

More on these couples, after the jump.
[Bonus wedding note: Check out this correction and ponder how annoyed this bride is.]

1. Zina Gelman and John Bash III
(Buy them a bath towel.)
The Case:
– We’ll start with a shot of the strong stuff. This groom is about to start the very plummiest of plummy legal jobs: a clerkship for Justice Antonin Scalia! John heads to One First Street from the chambers of DC Circuit Judge Brett M. Kavenaugh, but he left Judge Kavenaugh a little something to remember him by: his Bash-ful bride! Zina will begin clerking for the young judicial superstar later this month.
– With four Harvard degrees between them, John and Zina bleed a more prestigious shade of crimson than the rest of us. They met in Cambridge as undergrads (she graduated cum laude; he was summa) and continued their romance at HLS (she was cum laude; he was magna). A tipster e-mailed us with background:

Zina originally attended Columbia Law School, where she made the Columbia Law Review, but decided to transfer to Harvard when she also got onto Harvard Law Review (She took the competitions back-to-back; merely finishing both would be impressive, but getting onto both journals is amazing!).

Indeed. And we don’t need any tipsters to alert us to Zina’s extreme foxiness. What a beauty!
The Case Against:
– Typical overachievers, John and Zina didn’t stop at planning their ceremony for 7/7/07 — they also timed it to begin at 7 o’clock! All 777 guests then feasted on a seven-course dinner at which seven virgins were sacrificed, the Times did not report.
– LEWW has learned that John and Zina dabble in animal torture. If you’re a sensitive soul, you may not want to click on this link. Tragic.
2. John Alexander and John Lipsey
The Case:
– John-John weds! And there was no ugly prenuptial tiff over whether John would take John’s last name.
– John A., who has an undergraduate degree from UCSD, is about to begin studying for a MFA at Columbia. John L. was an undergrad at Washington University and has a JD from American University. He’s a VP at LexisNexis Martindale Hubbell, where he supervises marketing strategy. Hey, John — we’ve got a marketing strategy: Plaster the Lexis logo on every cheap office gadget you can lay your hands on! Then, using free food and drink, lure summer associates to events where they will have no choice but to accept the gadgets and keep them in their junk drawers for the rest of their professional lives. Genius! You may retire now.
The Case Against:
– We hope this couple’s friends and family have come up with a better system for distinguishing them in casual conversation than we have.

Sponsored

3. Anne Ho and John Griggs III
(Buy them a tea kettle.)
The Case:
– The bride has an undergraduate degree from NYU and an MBA from Harvard; the groom went to Stanford and Michigan Law. Thumbs-up to this well-rounded mix of outstanding schools — there’s solid Ivy-tude, but also hipness, athletic achievement, and geographic diversity. The classy/cool vibe is echoed in their picture, which we love.
– Anne is the senior director at an executive search firm in San Francisco. John has abandoned the law to found his own company, Centaurus Investments, which has the requisite brawny, mythology-derived name of a hedge fund but is actually a real estate company.
The Case Against:
– They were married by a friend with a minister’s license from the Universal Life Church (presumably obtained over the internet for the occasion). We’re not huge fans of going this route for an officiant — although we recognize that it’s often necessitated by crazy state marriage laws.
The Verdict:
All four Johns have something going for them, but only the Bash-man has A SCOTUS clerkship, a mind-blowingly appealing wife, his own category on Above the Law. Seven salutes to Team Gelman-Bash!

Sponsored

Topics