There’s nothing scary about this Halloween edition of the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. Our featured newlyweds include two Skadden associates, a SCOTUS clerk, and a famous heiress / model / entrepreneur.

Here are our fabulous finalist couples:

1. Limor Robinson and Jordan Mann

2. Heather Elliott and Stuart Rachels

3. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner

Marvel at the accomplishments of these couples, after the jump.

The competition between NYU Law and Columbia Law is always fierce — even when it is a race to the penny-pinching bottom. Two weeks ago, we told you that Columbia is now charging students for plastic forks (though chopsticks remain free).

Not to be outdone, a disgruntled NYU Law tipster reports:

So I’m in my last year at NYU Law and just had a fairly shocking experience…. I went to the lounge to get a cup for water from the water fountain. I grabbed a cup and walked away, and the cashier yelled at me. I thought she thought I was stealing a cup of coffee, so I told her I just wanted water. She said “that’s 25 cents.” I said “no, I just want water.” She said “I know,that’ll be 25 cents. We have to pay for those cups.” The worst part? It was a cup from Starbucks with the “we proudly serve Starbucks coffee” logo on the side.

Indignation from our tipster, plus a clarification about Columbia cutlery, after the jump.

Congratulations to Caroline Nyenke and LaRue Robinson, selected by ATL readers as our August Couple of the Month in a close race. Things were a bit more lopsided in our September Couple of the Month poll, as SCOTUS clerks and lovebirds Karen Dunn and Brian Netter took the crown with 40 percent of the vote. Both couples will compete for Couple of the Year honors in a few months.

Now, this week’s contestants:

1. Molly Rusten and Peter Rosen

2. Xixi Yin and Edward Amley Jr.

3. Simrin Parmar and John Bennett

Check out these newlyweds’ pictures and bios, after the jump.

When we tried to launch the ill-fated Courtship Connection, a matching service for ATL readers, we were stymied. Matchmaking was hard (especially when people didn’t respond to our e-mails).

Maybe we should have organized singles parties instead. That’s how the Ivy Plus Society operates. Whereas Courtship Connection sought to match up legal types, this dating society wants to bring together potential mates from elite universities. It had its inaugural D.C. event on Friday, reports ABC News:

Requirements for membership in TIPS are strict. Attendees must have attended one of the eight Ivy League schools or a handful of other TIPS-approved institutions. The University of Chicago and the Naval Academy qualify for the list.

If you were a graduate University of Virginia School of Law graduate, OK, you can attend. But, if you studied at UVA only as an undergraduate, sorry. UVA doesn’t make the grade.

[UPDATE: As noted by a commenter, UVA undergrad is now on the list. Perhaps there was an outcry over its original omission?]

“You can only be so superficial for so long,” said one young college graduate at Friday night’s event, who preferred to remain anonymous. He said he’s tired of trying to meet potential mates at general admission bars and parties. “I would like to find people of equivalent educational background — too dicey to go to a bar and find that. It’s nice to know, generally, people are going to be closer to your intellectual range.”

Because it’s not superficial to date only people from top-ranked schools…

So which law schools make the cut for Ivy League Plus?

This week’s Vows column is a jaw-dropper. Twelve-year-old girl has crush on doorman (“‘He looked like the guy from Tiger Beat,’ she recalled”), stalks doorman for over a decade, and finally marries him. And he’s still the doorman!

Also, don’t miss this Skadden associate’s unorthodox proposal: He had his girlfriend served with a “complaint” while he was in the men’s room.

On to this week’s couples:

1. Florence Davis and Anthony Gooch

2. Alexandra Seggerman and Stephen Poellot

3. Marin Levy and Joseph Blocher Jr.

Read all about this week’s featured newlyweds, after the jump.

This couple definitely merits an honorable mention this week. They met a year ago in Vegas and turned a 24-hour hookup into a NYT wedding announcement featuring seersucker, a 6-year age difference, and a JD from Widener. It’s certainly one of the more colorful lawyer wedding announcements we’ve seen in a while (although we concede the bar is fairly low).

We even managed to find a picture for you, seersucker and all. They look like they know how to party, don’t they?

On to our finalists, who are more prestigious — but admittedly a bit less colorful:

1. Dolores DiBella and David Schmid

2. Susanna Cowen and Ross McSweeney

3. Kara Burke and Matthew King

Check out these couples’ photos and qualifications, after the jump.

Jeez. Even we are sick of this story — and that’s saying a lot.

But apparently some folks think, despite the endless navel-gazing and handwringing over the (canceled) visit of Dr. Li-ann Thio to NYU Law School, that there is more to be said here.

Above the Law’s commitment to bring you all of the latest details about the crazy saga of Dr. Li-ann Thio is unmatched. On Wednesday night, we broke the news that Dr. Thio decided against teaching at NYU Law School this fall.

Now we have Dr. Thio’s official statement explaining her decision to withdraw as a visiting professor. According to the resignation letter she sent to NYU Law Dean Richard Revesz, a lack of tolerance changed Dr. Thio’s mind about NYU Law:

As an Asian woman whose legal training has spanned the finest institutions in both East and West, I believe I would have something of value to offer your students. However, the conditions no longer exist to proceed with the visit, given the animus fuelled by irresponsible misrepresentation/distortions and/or concerted invective from certain parties. Friends and colleagues have also expressed serious concerns about my safety and well-being.

I am convinced that a primary condition for learning and teaching, especially in my chosen fields (which are rife with contested concepts) - human rights and constitutional law - is a tolerant, serene environment where different viewpoints emanating from a variety of worldviews are heard with mutual respect and carefully evaluated, in a civilised fashion. I have always striven to ensure my classroom would exemplify such conditions and had planned to bring this practice to my NYU classroom.

Dr. Thio Li-ann appears to be arguing that NYU Law students should respect her beliefs. But some of her beliefs sound pretty disrespectful to gays and lesbians in the NYU Law community. Unless “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” counts as a respectful way of discussing sexual practices.

Of course, since we are dealing with Dr. Thio, the letter goes on. Brevity is not her strong suit. Read more after the jump.

Last night, NYU had two “firestorms”: the announcement that Dr. Thio would not be coming to campus, and a more literal fire at NYU’s Bobst library.

From a tipster around 5 p.m. yesterday:

Just got out of NYU’s Bobst library. There was a small fire and they evacuated everybody inside. I had to run down 6 flights of smoke filled stairs. Great way to prep for the bar exam…

Our correspondent from Greenwich had particularly bad luck:

I actually think if I went down the main stairs I would be fine. They herded us towards two separate fire exits (on the washington park side), and the one I went down was the one filled with smoke. It cleared up around the first floor, so maybe the fire was on the second floor? … The ironic thing is, the other set of stairs seemed fine, and I’m not even a student at NYU. I just came here for one day to see a friend and for the change of atmosphere.

We’d advise heading to the NYU Law Library to study instead, but we have heard that mysterious smells lurk there.

Soooooo, the bar exam is next week. How’s that studying going? Feel free to kvetch in the comments.

Earlier: Breaking: Dr. Thio Is Not Coming To NYU Law
Breaking: Mystery Smell Hits NYU Law Library!!!

Details are still sketchy, but word on the street is that Dr. Li-ann Thio will not be coming to NYU Law School this fall. It appears that Dr. Thio has voluntarily decided not to serve as a visiting professor.

As many of you know, Dr. Thio has been heavily criticized by some in the NYU community (and beyond) for the allegedly anti-gay views she professed as a member of Singapore’s Parliament. But up to this point, Dr. Thio has enjoyed the support of Dean Richard Revesz and the NYU administration.

We previously reported that early returns showed low student registration for Dr. Thio’s classes this fall. A petition protesting her appointment garnered over 800 signatures. It’s too early to tell if any of this affected her decision to withdraw.

We will let you know when we receive official word from the law school or Dr. Thio.

UPDATE: The official announcement is now available. Check it out after the jump.

We sometimes like to think of the figures we write about in these pages as characters in a novel. Viewed in this way, Dr. Li-ann Thio, the visiting NYU law professor who apparently isn’t a fan of gay rights, is one of the most compelling we’ve come across recently.

We have a weakness for strong, outspoken Asian women — hi Mom! — and this description fits Dr. Thio to a T. Our only disappointment: Dr. Thio was whiny when attacked. (We agree with Professor Brian Leiter — playing the victim card was weak, Dr. Thio.)

Now, meet an even more compelling character — one who wouldn’t have responded to a random IT guy by playing victim, but by treating him like Obama treated that fly. She’s the original Dr. Thio: Li-ann Thio’s mother, Dr. Su Mien Thio (pictured), who taught Thio the Younger everything she knows (e.g., that gay sex is evil).

From a tipster:

It looks like Dr. Thio’s mother — a former judge who inspired Li-ann Thio’s own rise in politics — was involved in some serious anti-gay drama this year, after battling what she saw as a conspiracy to generate a “generation of lesbians.”

It all started with unrest over a screening of Spider Lilies, a lusty Taiwanese movie about an Internet cam girl [Ed. note: A cam girl? Like SexyLexus?] falling in love with another girl. The elder Dr. Thio, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, filled with the same heroic indignation as her daughter, ended up locked out of a building after a failed takeover of a feminist organization.

And the trailer for the movie is totally hot!

Update: Not surprisingly, given her staunch opposition to homosexuality, Dr. Thio Su Mien is also against abortion. A headline from Roll on Friday: “Leading Singaporean lawyer blames abortion for SARS.”

More about the Spider Lilies controversy and Dr. Su Mien Thio’s impressive résumé, after the jump.

Or close to nothing. That’s the likely enrollment in Human Rights Law in Asia, the course that Dr. Li-ann Thio, the visiting professor from Singapore with controversial views on gay rights, is scheduled to teach at NYU Law School this fall.

An NYU law student reports:

I think there’s a point everyone is missing about this story, and it is this:

We just had to submit our bids for fall courses. A grand total of five people applied for Dr. Thio’s class. It is totally going to get canceled. In comparison, Kenji Yoshino’s Con Law classes got 230 primary bids PER SECTION. NYU Law voted with its feet.

It’s not clear whether the student is referring to Human Rights Law in Asia (3 credits) or Constitutionalism in Asia (2 credits). Other sources tell us, however, that both courses are severely undersubscribed. NYU Law alumna Jill Filipovic, who over at Feministe expressed the hope that nobody would sign up for Dr. Thio’s classes, must be pleased.

(In case you’re not familiar with him, Kenji Yoshino is the openly gay law professor that NYU hired away from Yale last year. He is a leading scholar of gay rights and queer theory.)

Update: We now have greater clarity, from our original tipster:

She’s teaching 2 courses. Human Rights got 9 bids, 5 primary and 4 alternates, and Constitutionalism got 5 bids, just 1 primary and 4 alternates. The results of bidding will be available next week so we’ll know more about how many people actually end up in the class then. But I think it’s pretty safe to assume NYU is not going to run two seminars with just a handful of people in them.

We contacted the law school, to confirm the registration numbers and to see if Dr. Thio’s classes were in danger of being canceled.

Read their response, plus additional discussion, after the jump.

When last we checked in on the saga of Dr. Li-ann Thio, the incoming NYU Law visiting professor who equated anal sex to drinking by shoving a straw up your nose, Dean Richard Revesz was defending the invitation extended to her.

But over the weekend, an information technology professional who works for NYU law (and who is also an NYU student) asked the dean to reconsider. Here’s part of the letter from Malik Graves-Pryor:

While I can understand your position and reasoning in displaying solidarity to the larger NYU School of Law community regarding Hauser Global’s decision to bring in Professor Li-Ann Thio … I must state my strong objection to her appointment and the official NYU Law defense of said appointment.

As an African-American man working in the LawITS department, and simultaneously a student at NYU, I could never imagine the day would come when NYU would allow the appointment of a legal scholar who held the opinion that African-Americans practice acts of “gross indecency”, that African-Americans who strive for diversity should be rebuffed because “diversity is not a license for perversity”, describing the private intimate acts between African-Americans as trying to “shove a straw up your nose to drink”, among other intellectually and morally shallow absurdities.

In response, Dr. Thio unleashed an 18-point defense that she sent to the entire NYU Law faculty. Apparently, she feels unfairly maligned:

1. I am a little tired of the torrent of abuse and defamation that I have been receiving, and blatant emotive misrepresentations of my position. I was going to stay above the fray but given this insidious attack on my academic reputation (aside from many ad hominem insults), I feel I must cast some clarity on certain issues.

More fighting after the jump.

NYU Law gays, consider yourselves warned: Dr. Li-ann Thio is not afraid of you. The outspoken professor, who vehemently opposed decriminalizing gay sex as a member of the Singapore parliament, is ready to rumble:

We can be united in commitment to this principle [of academic freedom], without slavishly bowing to a demanded uniformity or dogma of political correctness set by elite diktat. I cannot say I am impressed by this ugly brand of politicking which I hope is not endemic….

I am disappointed at the intolerant animosity directed at me by strangers who do not know me and have decided to act on their own prejudices, forged from whatever sources, I am nonetheless glad that there are still some at NYU, who uphold a commitment to academic freedom and who entertain dissent with respect. As a recent NYU graduate, a Muslim friend of mine said, one must have courage in the face of bullying.

Dr. Thio can’t be prejudiced. Some of her best friends are Muslim!

Although her defense of the Singaporean statute against gay sex has been dismissed by one prominent American law professor as “dumb” and “embarrassing[],” Dr. Thio is not unaware of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in this area:

[C]ertain Americans have to realize the fact that there are a diversity of views on the subject and it is not a settled matter; there is no universal norm and it is nothing short of moral imperialism to suggest there is. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no consensus on this even within the U.S. Supreme Court and American society at large, even post Lawrence v. Texas.

Dr. Thio is fighting political correctness with political correctness, accusing LGBT activists of cultural imperialism. Yikes! Find something to bite down on, kids, ‘cause she’s not planning to use lube pull her punches.

Meanwhile, the NYU Law School administration has (finally) issued a public statement on L’Affaire Thio.

Read the statement, after the jump.

LEWW often hears complaints about the elitism and snobbery of the NYT’s wedding coverage (and, by extension, our coverage of the coverage). “What about all the couples who didn’t meet at Harvard?” critics cry.

In response, we’d like to point you to this Vows column from mid-June. Roughly twice a year, the NYT covers the wedding of what it presumably considers “average Americans,” seeking thereby to demonstrate that its weddings sections isn’t only for privileged Ivy Leaguers and their wealthy parents. This one, for example, features a pregnant bride and at least one electronic monitoring bracelet. Enjoy.

And now, this week’s legal eagle finalist couples (six people, six Harvard degrees, zero ankle bracelets):

1. Katherine Zeisel and Joshua Salzman

2. Maria Gambale and Zachary Taylor

3. Karen Milkosky and Patrick Curran

Check out these couples’ résumés and photos, after the jump.

Time for a quick follow-up on Monday’s post about NYU Law School’s controversial decision to invite Dr. Li-ann Thio, an outspoken proponent of criminalizing gay sex, to teach a course on human rights in the fall. The post generated almost 300 comments, many of them quite thoughtful — like this one:

I am a gay man living in Singapore. I have lived in Asia (including Singapore) for over 15 years. So, I have firsthand knowledge of the discriminatory environment for gay men and lesbians living in Singapore.

I am not sure what the administrators of NYU Law School were thinking when they hired Dr. Thio to teach “human rights” in Asia. Asking a Singaporean tenured at a Singapore government-funded university to teach about human rights in Asia is like asking a Ku Klux Klan grandmaster to teach about racial equality. She will simply be a mouthpiece for the Singapore government’s positions on human rights issues. If Dr. Thio espoused views opposed to the Singapore government’s - trust me - she would not be teaching at the National University of Singapore. As everyone in the international human rights community knows, the Singapore government is not a “model” example for upholding human rights.

So Dr. Thio may not have been the best person in the galaxy to pick as a visiting professor of human rights. On the other hand, her views — definitely unorthodox in the American legal academy — could generate healthy and informative debate (like what we saw in our comments).

In our reader poll, which attracted over 3,000 votes, over 55 percent of you supported NYU’s decision to host Dr. Li-ann Thio. Not surprisingly, given the freewheeling, irreverent comments on this site, ATL readers are pro-free speech.

And so is the NYU OUTLaw Board, to its credit. In the wake of our coverage, the board issued a statement criticizing Li-ann Thio’s views, but simultaneously observing that it is “best to fight Dr. Thio’s offensive views not by silencing her but by engaging in a respectful and productive dialogue about the boundaries of human rights.”

The full OUTLaw statement — plus an adult-themed reader poll, by popular request — after the jump.

Academic freedom is a beautiful thing, essential to our nation’s celebrated system of higher education. And, to borrow the words of Dick Cheney on gay marriage, “freedom means freedom for everyone” — including people whose ideas we might not like, or even find repugnant.

How far should academic freedom extend? That’s an issue being faced right now at NYU Law School. The following message went out to the law student community last week:

Dear Student,

We are writing on behalf of OUTLaw, NYU Law’s LGBT student group, to raise awareness of anti-gay statements made by a NYU visiting professor. Dr. Li-ann Thio, a professor at the National University of Singapore, will be teaching Human Rights Law in Asia during the Fall 2009 semester as a Global Visiting Professor of Law at NYU.

In 2007, the Singaporean Parliament was considering repealing 377A - the statute criminalizing consensual sex between men in Singapore. Dr. Thio, a Nominated Member of Parliament, gave a speech before Parliament arguing against the repeal. In her speech supporting the continued criminalization of “acts of gross indecency” between two males, she made such statements as, “You cannot make a human wrong a human right,” “Diversity is not a license for perversity,” and that anal sex is like “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” (http://theonlinecitizen.com/2007/10/377a-serves-public-morality-nmp-thio-li-ann). The efforts to repeal 377A failed, and consensual sex between men is still illegal in Singapore.

While respecting Dr. Thio’s right to her opinion and without questioning her teaching abilities, OUTLaw believes it is important for LGBT students and allies to be aware of her views in order to make fully informed decisions regarding class registration. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the OUTLaw Board at nyu.outlaw@gmail.com.

The NYU OUTLaw Board

Links to videos of her speech to the Parliament: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWqp3mLz4ko (part 1), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUDYo29gNNg (part 2), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPIdp0qXZy4 (part 3)”

The videos are worth checking out (especially if you’re a high school debater wanting to relive your glory days). Dr. Thio speaks persuasively and with conviction, supporting her argument against gay sex with an impressively broad range of sources, from the Bible to Immanuel Kant to contemporary bloggers. One would expect nothing less from someone with her dazzling educational pedigree: a BA from Oxford, an LLM from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from Cambridge. Don’t call her Dr. TTThio!

Additional discussion, plus a reader poll, after the jump.

Times are tough for the paper that gives us all the news that’s fit to print, so we almost feel badly about calling the old girl out on this. But it is the New York Times after all.

The paper recently mentioned NYLS-grad-turned-cupcake-entrepreneur Lev Ekster, who’s gotten lots of attention from us, as well as from other media outlets. But this recent article on the vendor truck turf wars incorrectly states that Lev is an NYU Law grad. Here’s a screenshot:

The NYT is not the first to make this mistake. When Thrillist first broke the cupcake story in mid-May, it made the same mistake, since corrected. We all make mistakes, but we’d like to try to prevent the MSM making this one in the future. Here’s our memo (with love):

To: The New York Times and other media outlets
From: Above The Law
Re: New York Law School vs. New York University Law School

New York Law School is not New York University Law School.

NYLS is in Tribeca. NYU Law is in Greenwich Village.

NYLS has 2 Girls 1 Dress. NYU has Arthur Miller.

NYU Law is ranked the fifth best law school in the land. NYLS is ranked.

Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart [New York Times]

Last week, the “normal-seeming” couple won our reader poll in a romp over the buttoned-up, hyper-achieving competition. No danger of that this week! All three of these contestant couples give off major type-A vibes and are firmly locked in prestigious-degree-accumulation mode. And oh, how we love them.

Here are the contestants:

1. Alyssa Worsham and Bretton Dimick

2. Sada Jacobson and Brendan Bâby

3. Julie Ehrlich and Noam Elcott

Check out these couples’ credentials and photos, after the jump.

There are certain phrases you don’t expect to encounter in the same wedding announcement. “U2’s The Edge” and “associate counsel to President George W. Bush” probably fit that bill. And yet one of this week’s weddings manages just that curious alchemy, and more.

Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Robyn Neblett and Jermaine Fanfair

2. Elaine Stuart and Nirav Shah

3. Leslie Fahrenkopf and Thomas Foley

Get all the details on these couples, after the jump.