Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 07.22.07: Seeds of Love
Apart from our three finalist couples, there isn’t much to highlight for you this week: just some minor WGWAG action, and, in the Vows column, a nice shout-out to LEWW’s temporary home city.
So without further ado, we bring you our fabulous finalists:
1. Nykeesha Davis and Chad Peterman
More about these couples, after the jump.
1. Nykeesha Davis and Chad Peterman
(Buy them a pasta canister.)
The Case:
- Nykeesha is a law student at Howard (so technically this is an eagle-hatchling pairing). She spent this summer in New York and Shanghai, where the Weil things are. Her undergraduate degree is from Spelman College; she also has a master’s from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
- “Where’s the Ivy glamour?” you ask. The groom’s got it! He has an undergrad degree from Princeton and a law degree from Georgetown. He’s currently an associate at Patterson Belknap.
The Case Against:
- The couple’s website tells the story of how they met:
“At a law firm event, we were unsuspecting partners in a game of pool. After talking for four hours, we planted the seeds to become partners for life.”Those seeds later sprouted in the Garden of Overly Descriptive Sexual Metaphors.
2. Deborah Bernstein and David Foster
(Buy them a reversible meat tenderizer.)
The Case:
- Yet another white, male, Harvardized, SCOTUS clerk takes a bride! David just finished a clerkship for Justice Anthony Kennedy (presumably David and Deborah received Kennedy’s signature wedding gift: a waffle iron and some flip-flops).
- David is Harvard-Harvard (magna-magna!); Deborah was cum laude at Dartmouth and has a law degree from UVA (she’s an associate at Bingham McCutchen in DC).
- Of the three Harvard-grad SCOTUS-clerk weddings we’ve featured in July (the others are here and here), this is our favorite picture, by a long shot — and that’s not just because Deborah looks like a typically fun, down-to-earth product of Dartmouth. (LEWW admits to having a prodigious school-crush on Dartmouth graduates. Point to almost any top-20 school, and we can name an ass or five in its stable of alumni. But we’ve never met a Dartmouth grad we didn’t want to pour chocolate over and eat with a spoon.)
- Prompted by the seed-planting above, today LEWW announces a rule (but, like Justice Kennedy, we’ll feel free to ignore it in later rulings): The less personal background divulged in a couple’s public wedding website, the better. The Bernstein-Foster website is nice and restrained.
The Case Against:
- Intermarriage! Discuss. (Just to be clear: LEWW actually loves intermarriage, race-mixing, and a bunch of other things that are probably frowned upon at Maimonides High School. We only put this under The Case Against to fill the space.)
3. Ellen Bradford and Todd McIntosh
(Buy them a dripless bulb baster.)
The Case:
- Ellen is an associate at Sidley in Chicago. She got her JD from Harvard after graduating summa from Clemson. Todd went to West Virginia University and works in software consulting.
The Case Against:
- They met in February 2006, and seven months later they already had a wedding website. Somebody’s been planning her “special day” since she was a wee little princess, hasn’t she? Todd, did she try to get you to spend your third date making tears of joy packets? ‘Cause that would have been a good time to bail, man.
- LEWW understands that you don’t need to be from New York to have your wedding featured in the Times. That said, we do think it’s nice where there’s some semblance of a New York connection — family, alma mater, Jewish heritage — to keep the enterprise faintly dignified. Ellen and Todd are an egregious case of people with zero connection to New York (“Her father is a sales associate with Barnes & Nobel in Eden Prairie [Minnesota].”) thrusting their way onto these pages. They probably are also the type of people who talk about how crazy and dirty New York is and how they could never, ever live there.
The Verdict:
What can we do? As long as the Elect choose to marry, LEWW will be here to bestow upon them the glory they are due. That is our humble role, however it may make us yawn. Congratulations, Team Bernstein-Foster!
(If you’re wondering whether the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch will ever again feature a close race, the Couple of the Month competition for July will be bruising — and you, the readers, will choose the winner! At least three of the Elect will be pitted against each other — Harvard men all — with this weekend’s slot yet to be determined.)
(36) 
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Foster is a total cutie. Deborah is lucky she met him (before he was snatched up by one of the rest of us!).
I get the feeling that 5:19 is Foster himself. No other rational explanation.
5:19: Really?
6:40:
I totally agree.
And although the name "Nykeesha" is a bit cliché, I would have gone with Davis-Peterman out of general principle, and because its Friday.
go Big Green!
Todd needs to stop stuffing his face with pies...he will be dead within ten years from a massive heart attack.
Billy Merck is fat and sweaty.
Funny. I've met many a douchebag Dartmouth grad. Must be the circles I run in.
Two weeks ago, commenters made the most vile comments on how Zina Gelman's credentials were supposedly subpar by comparison to Bash's. Well, here we have another double-Harvard SCOTUS clerk similar to John Bash in many respect, and I'd like to be the first to point out that Zina's credentials (double-Harvard with honors at each, Harvard Law Review) are 100 times more impressive than Bernstein's. Where are all the hateful comments now?
Laurie -- either we have different standards, or you've been lucky. But most Dartmouth grads I've met are incredibly pedantic. Far moreso than other Ivies.
So the real question then is how to rank the Ivies?
I'll throw out
Harvard>Yale=Princeton>>Columbia>>Penn>Brown>Dartmouth>Cornell
1:01 is Bash...
So the real question then is how to rank the Ivies?
I'll throw out
Harvard>Yale=Princeton>>Columbia>>Penn>Brown>Dartmouth>Cornell
WONG! Princeton; Yale; Harvard, Columbia, et al.
Bitch please. Ranking Princeton above Harvard or Yales makes no f-ing sense at all. You can disagree over whether Harvard or Yale is number 1, but Princeton?!? Get a clue.
I'm just sayin'...
Harvard=Yale=Princeton>>Columbia=Dartmouth=Wharton>>UPenn (minus Wharton)>Cornell>>Brown
Laurie, another genius posting. "Garden of Overly Descriptive Sexual Metaphors"? Brilliant! The Kennedy joke? Divine! Sincerely, your DG predecessor.
Unsurprisingly, since this week's winner is a liberal clerking for a left-wing judge, there is no gratuitious bashing in the comments (of the kind that characterized the comments on John Bash's thread). Conservatives and moderates, of course, have no need to make hateful statements about a liberal they don't know. Yet for some incomprehensible reason, liberals will keep denying that the hatred directed at Bash two weeks ago was politically motivated.
No, I just think this week's contest was an easy win for couple #2. No real grounds for disagreement here. With regards to Bash/Gelman, some thought the win was undeserved and should have gone to couple no. 3.
I don't recall anyone saying that Bash/Gelman weren't very impressive (quad Hs with honors, COAs, and one SCOTUS seem pretty hard evidence). However, people did disagree with the "gorgeous" accolades, and pointed out that couple no. 3 seemed infintely more interesting/hip/pretty/whatever and also had outstanding credentials.
Don't worry, though, since you seem intent to make this a liberal v. conservative debate, you can just organize the Fed Soc voting machine to make sure that Bash/Gelman win the couple of the month race. The rest of us really don't care all that much.
Uh, where is the WGWAG action? : I see NONE
8:20 pm -- You "recall" incorrectly. Several comments last week attacked Gelman's credentials explicitly. And has as been the case the last several weeks, at least one poster commented that SCOTUS clerkships are not based on merit. Pretty sure someone also commented that the SCOTUS clerks he/she had met were not very impressive.
No such commentary offered this week.
The comments that SCOTUS clerkships are based partially on connections (whether political, personal, or through a feeder judge or professor) apply equally to Foster, I think. It doesn't really surprise anyone that Reinhardt isn't a feeder to Scalia or Thomas, right?
This week's competition was an easy game. This month's LEWW should be interesting, esp. with people taking things so personally.
8:38--
Click on the hyperlink, you idiot.
Dear Fed Soc guy - Could it be that the difference in responses is not a liberal/conservative thing, but based mainly on the fact that that this post went up late on a Friday afternoon? Maybe?
I don't understand why we're expected not to judge people based on political ideology. If I can't judge people for apparently being wealthy Republican douches, what can I judge them for?
Perhaps more relevantly, this week's couple looks cute and down to Earth, whereas Zelman/Bash were posed in the most twee, affected way I've ever seen in one of these pictures.
As to why Bradford/McIntosh is in the Times, I understand from discussions with the Times in connection with my own wedding that they view as sufficiently "newsworthy" any wedding involving a graduate of Harvard Law or Yale Law. You know, keeping with the Times' history of being the "paper of record" for the elite and all -- it's the paper all one's friends read. So Bradford certainly qualifies.
8:20 p.m.: I agree this is a clear win (unlike the liberals, I can admit to this even when the winner does not share my politics). But the runner up still came closer this week than on Bash's week. Several commenters two weeks ago inexplicably claimed that Gelman's credentials were subpar, yet she is above Bernstein by several orders of magnitude in every respect. Dartmouth is no Harvard; UVA law is no HLS; and for all we know Berstein did not stand out academically either in college or law school, when Gelman got both degrees with honors and was on the Harvard Law Review on top of this. Any comparison between the two is absurd and I can't wait to see what distorted rationale the leftists will come up with when it comes time for the couple of the month...
7:48 a.m.: Nonsense. Bash's thread attracted 92 comments (half personal attacks) posted at various times throughout the week-end.
10:22 a.m.: The problem is not only that commenters judge people based on their politics, but that they make hateful comments ostensibly unrelated to politics, but only for political reasons, while simultaneously denying that politics is what this is about. This is particularly chilling considering that this is far too reminiscent of what Judge Bork had to endure.
I went to Dartmouth and a definite majority of my classmates were complete asshats. Laurie is clearly dealing with a skewed sample.
The masters degree from MIIS ain't no joke.
Fed Soc is Bash, protectin' his woman!!
11:30: I appreciate the compliment; if I am confused for a Scalia clerk, I must be doing something right. But no, obviously your assertion is ridiculous. I was already denouncing left-wing hatred on this site long before Bash was part of the picture and, aside from that, I can assure you that a SCOTUS clerk doesn't have time to waste arguing with random loonies on the Internet (especially when he can argue with loonies clerking for say, Stevens instead).
Dartmouth is an ivy? I thought it was a bartending school.
"This is particularly chilling considering that this is far too reminiscent of what Judge Bork had to endure."
don't lose your britches there, fed soc! silly (or even mean) commentary on wedding announcemnts =/= debate (even acrimonious debate) over SCOTUS nominees. but your histrionic hand-wring is amusing nonetheless.
Where is that great older couple featured in yesterday's Times "special section" or whatever it's called? The one with the big pic and write up. The groom is a lawyer. She is a scientist. I thought their story and wedding was much more romantic than these typical website marriages. Where is the real passion and eroticism? After all, in the end that is what life is all about. You'll learn.
4:23--
Where indeed? Maybe there's nothing about that couple because their announcement was printed on Sunday and this column was published last Friday and discusses wedding announcements from the previous weekend. But what do I know? Maybe that's too obvious.
Sheesh. The idiocy of people who comment on this site never ceases to amaze me.