Female Law Professors Continue Their Assault On The World

Unbeknownst to most of us, when Ted Kennedy died Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren became the last liberal with balls. While other Democrats have been desperately trying to keep themselves in the good graces of Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren has been standing toe-to-toe with the bankers. It therefore seems only appropriate that Warren is now running for Ted Kennedy's old Senate Seat....

Unbeknown to most of us, when Ted Kennedy died Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren became the last liberal with balls. While other Democrats have been desperately trying to keep themselves in the good graces of Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren has been standing toe-to-toe with the bankers.

It therefore seems only appropriate that Warren is now running for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate Seat. She will officially announce her candidacy sometime today.

If she wins the nomination (if Martha Coakley runs again, Warren won’t even have to “campaign” for the nomination, she’ll run primary ads saying “Again? How stupid are you?”), the battle between Warren and the incumbent, Senator Scott “the Body” Brown, will be interesting.

But let’s say that the last Democrat can win in one of the last liberal bastions. It’ll mean another solid win for liberal women law professors during the Obama administration…

To look at Obama’s presidency thus far is to look at the rise of legal women. Samantha Power, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Elizabeth Warren — and that’s not including his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who will probably go down as one of the best we’ve ever had and is also a lawyer. It’s an all-star cast. If Obama was thought of as “white,” I’d call him Big Pimp Daddy President ’cause nobody would think that was racist. Obama’s record on identifying and promoting qualified women is probably “best ever” in terms of U.S. presidents.

And what has to be exciting for female law students and young female attorneys out there is the legal power these women achieved before they even became engaged in politics. Warren was a professor at Harvard Law School while I was there (though I never took a class with her). I had taken classes with Elena Kagan and with Lani Guiner and came to the empirical decision that taking classes with old white males was more beneficial to my GPA than taking classes with hard-ass women.

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(Just kidding. Well, I mean my empirical evidence was true, but that’s not why I missed Professor Warren.)

Warren was only lightly considered for the Harvard Law deanship before Kagan took over that post. I understand that she was, again, lightly considered to ascend after Kagan’s departure to the position that Martha Minow now holds. As I understand it, and don’t quote me on this as this is just from friends and enemies who may not have had any inside access to actually know what they were talking about, but the feeling on campus at least was that Warren was a bit too liberal to be dean.

So, at least some people think that Warren is decidedly more liberal than one of Obama’s picks for the Supreme Court.

I think we can all expect corporate interests to pour a lot of money into Scott Brown’s campaign for re-election. But unlike his battle against Coakley, Brown is going to need to spend that money on something other than hair gel to hold off Warren.

Another female law professor is coming. It’s kind of a golden age to be female, smart, and powerful.

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Elizabeth Warren Officially Launching Senate Campaign Against Scott Brown [TPM2012 / Talking Points Memo]
A Brown-Warren US Senate matchup could rival Weld-Kerry battle royale [Boston Globe]