The Eyes of the Law: Legal Celebrities Descend on William & Mary

Okay, so the folks over at TMZ.com don’t chase them around yet. But here at ATL, we adore legal celebrities — and invite you to send in your encounters with them, for our Eyes of the Law sightings column.
Last Friday, for lovers of legal boldface names from the left or the right, William & Mary School of Law was the place to be:

William and Mary Law School (and the College) had a series of speakers of today, all wedged into a very tight schedule. They included:

At noon, former Dean of UC Irvine School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to his talk, so I can’t say whether he talked about the controversy.

At 1 PM, UC Berkley professor (and evil incarnate if you believe some blogs) John Yoo spoke. Yoo said in his introduction that he was being “wedged in” between “the former Dean of UC Irvine” and Stuart Taylor, who was speaking at 2 on his book on the Duke rape case, “Until Proven Innocent.”

We also had a panel on Saturday on “Judicial Modesty,” which included such leading lights as Dahlia Lithwick, Michael McConnell, Carter Phillips and Jeffrey Rosen. See here (PDF).

Quite the weekend for legal geeks! (Er. You know. If I was one of them).

Although this tipster wasn’t at the Chemerinsky talk, other ATL readers were. Check out this video, posted on the blog of the W&M chapter of the American Constitution Society. Isn’t Chemerinsky adorable?
Additional discussion of the Erwin Chemerinsky and John Yoo appearances, after the jump.


Here’s what one student had to say about Professor Chemerinsky’s noontime appearance:

I thought you might enjoy this footage of Prof. Chemerinsky signing his famous Con Law book at a recent ACS event on campus at William & Mary. The panel was called “A Progressive Vision of Constitutional Interpretation.”

Even though one of the ACS members was brave enough to ask for the elusive Chemerinsky autograph, nobody was bold enough to inquire about the strange situation at UC-Irvine.

But apparently the subject did get raised at a later point in Professor Chemerinsky’s visit:

Yoo repeated the [“former dean”] joke when he was on a panel with Chemerinsky later that night, saying that he was pleased to be on the same panel as the “former dean of UC Irvine.” Chemerinsky laughed, but also looked quite embarrassed by the barb.

Other panelists got their shots in at Yoo, though. Moderator David Savage on the panel introduced him as “professor of law at UC Berkley and … some sort of service in the Bush administration.”

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Professor Chemerinsky can give as good as he gets (even if his target might be different):

At a panel about the Duke Lax case after the ACS event, Chemerinsky applauded Stuart Taylor’s new book for detailing the prosecutorial abuse in the legal proceedings. But he then politely ripped into the book, for baselessly blaming political correctness for everything wrong that happened in Durham.

Yoo snarking on Chemerinsky, Savage snarking on Yoo, Chemerinsky snarking on Taylor… Can’t we all just get along?
Prof. Chemerinsky Signs A Book [William & Mary ACS]

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