Despite their ideological differences, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg bond over their shared love for the opera. Both judicial luminaries attended Saturday’s opening night performance of Ariadne auf Naxos, at the Washington National Opera. If you’re into Article III celebrity sightings, the D.C. opera house is where it’s at.

Not only did the justices attend the opera; they also participated. An eyewitness evaluation of their performances, plus a photo of Justice Scalia with a sexy soprano in his lap, after the jump.

The Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Health Watch continues. This just in, from the AP:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery earlier this year, was briefly hospitalized overnight after having a bad reaction to some medicine.

A statement from the court says Ginsburg was taken to the Washington Hospital Center Wednesday night and released Thursday morning.

Doctors say Ginsburg had an adverse reaction to a sleeping aid combined with cold medicine. She took the medicine in preparation for an overnight flight to London, but was taken off the airplane after she experienced extreme drowsiness causing her to fall from her seat.

At least she didn’t fall asleep on the bench this time. We’d wish RBG a speedy recovery, but it seems that she has already recovered.

Ginsburg Briefly Hospitalized, Released Thurs. [Associated Press]

Earlier: Breaking: Justice Ginsburg Hospitalized
Update: Justice Ginsburg Is Back on the Job

We’re happy to report that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was hospitalized last night after feeling lightheaded, was released from Washington Hospital Center this morning. The famously hardworking jurist “was at her desk by early afternoon, the court said.”

Welcome back, Justice Ginsburg!

Justice Ginsburg Home From Hospital [AP]

Earlier: Breaking: Justice Ginsburg Hospitalized

In February of this year, Senator Jim Bunning predicted that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead in nine months from pancreatic cancer. It was a horrible and tasteless prediction, for which Senator Bunning apologized.

But might he be right? Here’s the latest news about Justice Ginsburg’s health. From the Associated Press:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized Thursday after becoming ill in her office at the court following treatment for an iron deficiency.

The 76-year-old justice, who underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in February, was taken to Washington Hospital Center at 7:45 p.m. EDT as a precaution, a statement from the court said.

Supreme Court clerks continue to flood the NYT wedding pages this month, creating grim LEWW odds for mere-mortal Cornell grads and Skadden associates. Like Troy playing Florida or North Texas playing Alabama, these folks are welcome to suit up, but the only question is how bad their whuppin’ is going to hurt.

Here are your three finalist couples for the week:

1. Rebecca Mancuso and Andrew Brunswick

2. Erin Gustafson and David Curtiss

3. Kathleen Devine and David Newman

Evaluate these newlyweds, after the jump.

Although the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis is having some issues — e.g., layoffs in Chicago, New York, Washington, and San Francisco — the firm still has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. When you’re involved in a must-win litigation or a major bankruptcy matter, K&E is the firm to see.

But are Kirkland & Ellis lawyers also the people to call when you need a table at a hot restaurant, or last-minute tickets to a sold-out show? Maybe so:

From: [A secretary to a senior partner in Chicago]
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2009 2:19 PM
To: All Chicago attorneys

Justice Ginsburg’s granddaughter is having her 19th birthday on October 3rd and wants to celebrate with 5 friends at her favorite restauraunt — Topolobampo. Unfortunately, they are booked solid on that date. Does anyone know Rick Bayless (the owner of Topolobampo and Frontera Grill) who could possibly make a table available for her.

Topolobampo — good choice! When we did our series of open threads on summer associate lunch suggestions, back in 2008 — when law firms still had summer lunch programs — Topolobampo was mentioned frequently and favorably in the Chicago thread.

So, were the K&E concierges able to come through for the Supreme Grandchild?

The Nine are all divine — but not all Supreme Court justices are created equal. Some are smarter than others. If you quiz former Supreme Court clerks, as we have, you’ll find that the Elect have strong opinions about who the smartest and most capable members of the Court are. (Depressingly enough, even after you became a justice of the United States Supreme Court, people will still rank you by your smarts.)

Liberal and conservative clerks alike generally cite Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as one of the sharpest and most self-sufficient — i.e., least clerk-dependent and clerk-driven — of the current justices. So some may be surprised by these tidbits, from RBG’s fascinating interview with Emily Bazelon (herself a descendant of Article III aristocracy, the granddaughter of David Bazelon, former chief judge of the Most Holy D.C. Circuit)

What do you think about Judge Sotomayor’s frank remarks that she is a product of affirmative action?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So am I. I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972, every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program. Every university had a contract, and Stan Pottinger would go around and ask, How are you doing on your affirmative-action plan? William McGill, who was then the president of Columbia, was asked by a reporter: How is Columbia doing with its affirmative action? He said, It’s no mistake that the two most recent appointments to the law school are a woman and an African-American man.

And was that you?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I was the woman. I never would have gotten that invitation from Columbia without the push from the Nixon administration. I understand that there is a thought that people will point to the affirmative-action baby and say she couldn’t have made it if she were judged solely on the merits. But when I got to Columbia I was well regarded by my colleagues even though they certainly disagreed with many of the positions that I was taking. They backed me up: If that’s what I thought, I should be able to speak my mind.

Of course, the case for affirmative action back then, over 30 years ago, may have been stronger than it is today.

More discussion, plus the chance for you to sound off in the comments, after the jump.

We’ll bottom-line this week’s contest, folks: The SCOTUS clerk wins. Yep, after a long absence, LEWW’s favorite credential makes a welcome appearance in the NYT weddings section, and we’ve got the details for you.

But first, congratulations to Sabrina Charles and Jamie Dycus, who readers overwhelmingly voted Legal Eagle Couple of the Month for May, demonstrating that — in the words of one commenter (and apparently, in the minds of ATL readers) — “Wachtell > Sotomayor > Olympic medal.”

Here are our finalists:

1. Kathryn Whitfield and Adam Fotiades

2. Christina Krause and Peter Henderson

3. Pamela Bookman and Jeffrey Perlman

More about these couples, after the jump.

* President of San Francisco’s Federal Reserve says the economy is getting better. “For the first time in a while, there is some good news to savor.” If by good news, you mean that laid-off lawyers have taken to wearing track suits around the house “savoring” comfort food instead of 6-figure salaries, then yes, there is reason for optimism. [Bloomberg.com]

* Meanwhile, Chrysler’s bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez paved the way for a fire sale of most of the company’s assets. [Reuters]

* A Miami juror, who was on the jury deliberating the case of 6 men accused of conspiring to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago, was replaced for refusing to deliberate. Got to hand it to her for getting out of jury duty. [The New York Times]

* Souter says goodbye, telling the U.S. Court of Appeals that a jurist’s satisfaction is “not in the great moments, but in being part of the great stream.” [The Washington Post]

* Should there be more women in the “great stream” Souter described. Justice Ginsburg says the Court would benefit from another woman. [USA Today]

* Senator Chuck Schumer went to bat for Loretta Lynch, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who held the job under Clinton and who has just been re-appointed by Obama. [The New York Times]

* AIG’s $33.6 million bonuses paid last week to 418 employees will be under intense scrutiny this week in Washington. Barney Frank does not look pleased. [The New York Times]

* Obama names moderate U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. [The Washington Post]

* U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg will undergo precautionary chemotherapy after her pancreatic cancer surgery. [Reuters]

* I guess my call to reform naughty judges was answered…the nation’s federal judges adopted new ethics rules yesterday. [The Associated Press]

* There is growing concern amongst some judges and lawyers that twittering jurors are threatening the integrity of cases presented in court. [CNET]

* Clifford Chance is subletting 25,000 square feet of excess office space to Kilpatrick Stockton. [The New York Observer]

* Some of the assets of Madoff’s now-defunct firm may be in Gibraltar—why is this interesting to you guys? It probably isn’t, but there are lots of lawyers involved. [Bloomberg]

* In case you are wondering, I’m in the foreground on the right in this artist’s depiction. [Courtoons]

* Are doctors now more hated than lawyers? That probably depends on how sick you are. [What About Clients?]

* Should you friend your boss on Facebook? [Corporette]

* It might be in poor taste, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s surgery was the opening bell on the Kagan v. Sotomayor steel cage match. [CQ Politics]

* Michael Phelps lost one of his sponsors, after being photographed smoking from what looked like a marijuana pipe. ESPN is doing 24/7 analysis about what this means for Phelps, kids, and America. I’m sure Katie Couric is going to get involved soon. Thank God I only smoke tobacco, drink alcohol and caffeine, eat red meat with lots of salt, take whatever Pfizer tells me I need, and gamble away all of my disposable income. A real role model follows the law! [Popsquire]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized for surgery for pancreatic cancer.

This isn’t the first time the Justice has been hospitalized for cancer.

The AP is reporting the Court’s statement about the surgery:

The court said the 75-year-old Ginsburg had the surgery Thursday at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She will remain in the hospital for seven to 10 days, said her surgeon. Dr. Murray Brennan. This was according to a release issued by the court. …

The court said a CAT scan revealed a tumor measuring about 1 centimeter across the center of the pancreas.

Hopefully, they caught this early enough and she will have a speedy recovery.

We’ll bring you more news as we have it.

Ginsburg Hospitalized for Pancreatic Cancer [New York Times]

The start of the new Supreme Court Term is still over a month away. The nine robed ones are all over the world — teaching in Europe, chilling in New Hampshire, and otherwise getting away from One First Street.

So things have been relatively quiet on the Supreme Court clerk hiring front. There are no new names over at the Clerkship Notification Blog or at Wikipedia (which also seems to be missing a few names that we reported last month).

But there has been some movement. We hear that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently hired David Newman (Yale 2006 / Katzmann / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.)) as her second law clerk for October Term 2010. (RBG has already completed her OT 2009 hiring.)

Have other justices interrupted their summer vacations to do some clerk hiring? If you’re aware of some news not previously reported in these pages, please share what you know, by email (subject line: “Supreme Court clerk hiring”).

If you’re interested, check out the updated list of Supreme Court clerks for OT 2009 and OT 2010 (with David Newman added), after the jump.

Good news for Legal Eagle Wedding Watchers: LEWW will be returning to a more frequent and timely posting schedule! Beginning next week, we’ll once again feature our gold standard of three fabulous couples per week to ogle and dissect.

We’ll bring you more hot August weddings tomorrow and Friday, but for now, it’s time for our readers to vote on a Couple of the Month for July. Although their write-up wasn’t in the NYT and therefore didn’t run in our normal LEWW column, we’re including celebrity professors Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein, whose union merited LEWW bonus coverage last month (as well as a shout-out in the Washington Post’s Reliable Source column).

For more information on these newlyweds, click on the link below. When you’re ready to vote, here’s the poll:

We interrupt the spirited smackdown of ATL Idol to bring you a couple of LEWW-related announcements. First, as expected, Team Ho-Glover scored a decisive win in June’s Couple of the Month voting. LEWW salutes this glorious SCOTUS - WGWAG - Friend-of-Lat juggernaut!

In other news, two notable grooms didn’t make our list of finalists this week. The first is Lee Bollinger, son of current Columbia University president (and former University of Michigan president) Lee Bollinger. And the second is Paul Lieberstein, who looks a lot like that guy who plays Toby in The Office. Because he is that guy.

On to this week’s contestants:

1. Sue-Yun Ahn and Charles Kitcher

2. Jennifer Hare and Jaron Shipp

3. Gena Hatcher and David Lenzi

4. Athena Theodoro and Daniel Adamson

Click on the link below to read more about these impressive legal matches.

Things have been quiet on the Supreme Court clerk hiring front. There are rumors that Justice Alito has finally finished hiring for October Term 2008, but nobody seems to know who the lucky winners are. If you know, please drop us a line.

We do, however, have some news. A tipster reports:

Justice Ginsburg just hired a 2006 UVA Grad to begin clerking summer 2009. I knew Pamela Bookman (pictured) in law school, and not only is she incredibly smart, she is remarkably fun and down to earth. Kudos to Pam!

For confirmation, see this article, which has the story of how Pam Bookman got an offer from RBG on the spot:

Even though Bookman [who is clerking for the International Court of Justice in The Hague] currently lives thousands of miles away from Washington, D.C., she was still able to arrange an in-person meeting with Ginsburg. Two weeks after receiving an e-mail from Klarman saying that Ginsburg wanted to interview her, Bookman traveled to Washington while visiting her parents during winter break. Bookman chuckled that her interview was her first time ever visiting the Supreme Court. After chatting with Ginsburg about international law, the justice offered her the job on the spot.

“It was thrilling, it was surreal,” she said. “I’m still not sure this is real.”

The current tally of OT 2008 and OT 2009 SCOTUS clerks, with Pamela Bookman added, appears after the jump.

* Does the Bush Administration have Blackwater’s back? The U.S. pushes for specific legal protections from Iraqi law for civilian contractors. [New York Times]

* West Virginia: a little less corrupt than last week? WV Supreme Court agrees to rehear Massey Energy case (previously discussed here). [AP; WSJ Law Blog]

* D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg steps down early, to make way for Chief Judge David Sentelle. [D.C. Circuit (PDF) via How Appealing]

* NYT endorses Hillary Clinton (but not for the reasons identified in the bumper sticker at right). [New York Times; New York Times]

* A more detailed report on the Georgetown Law event with Justice Ginsburg that we wrote about last night. [Georgetown Hoya via How Appealing]

One of the great things about going to law school here in Washington, D.C., is access to the U.S. Supreme Court. If you’re at Georgetown Law and want to watch a SCOTUS argument, you can just stroll on over to One First Street.

And sometimes the mountain comes to Mohammed. Justices of the Supreme Court regularly visit Georgetown University Law Center. For example, last November, as reported in these pages, Justice Antonin Scalia paid a visit.

Today his considerably more liberal counterpart, fellow opera lover Ruth Bader Ginsburg, graced GULC with her presence. From a tipster (who took the iPhone picture at right):

Justice Ginsburg just left an admitted students event at GULC, a discussion about U.K./U.S. comparative law. Also in attendance was Lady Hale of the soon-to-be U.K. Supreme Court.

Justice Ginsburg was very dignified. She was wearing a brown suit — it looked like a carpet — paired with white stockings and yellowish shoes.

Best part: when she whipped a copy of the Constitution out of her pocket and read out the Equal Protection Clause!!!

I had my Con Law book ready for her signature, but she snuck out a side door right afterwards.

For the Article III groupies among you, a little more description of the event appears after the jump.

Welcome. If you’re at home, tune in to C-SPAN, which is rebroadcasting the recent book party for Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas’s eagerly anticipated memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, is now in bookstores — and topping the bestseller charts (to the relief of his publisher, HarperCollins, which reportedly paid him a $1.5 million advance).

7:05: The party is being held at the elegant, red-brick Capitol Hill home of radio host and syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams. Expected to attend: 250 guests, including six Supreme Court justices, Vice President Dick Cheney, and several U.S. senators.

Armstrong Williams is interviewed. He explains that the party has been in the works since June. An overwhelming turnout is expected; more people were turned away than allowed to attend.

7:08: Justice Thomas climbs the stairs. When he enters the kitchen — which is right at the top of the stairs, and thus (oddly) where everyone enters and exits — he’s greeted by hearty applause.

Various guests hug him. One guest gushes over his 60 Minutes appearance. CT explains that CBS News made no promises about the nature of its coverage. Interesting. Considering how flattering that segment was, and how uncritical Steve Kroft was in his questioning of Justice Thomas, one might have suspected that Brangelina-type stipulations were in place.

More after the jump.

As we previously mentioned, and as Lawrence Hurley of the Daily Journal reports here, Congress is considering a proposal that would raise federal judges’ salaries by a significant margin. Here’s what the new scale would look like (with current salaries indicated parenthetically):

District Court Judges: $247,800 (up from $165,200)
Court of Appeals Judges: $262,700 ($175,100)
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court: $304,500 ($203,000)
Chief Justice of the United States: $318,200 ($212,100)

This proposal would cost millions in taxpayer dollars. So we have a better solution to the problem of federal judicial pay, which Chief Justice John Roberts has dubbed a “constitutional crisis.”

Here’s our brilliant idea: Require all federal judges to marry rich!

Don’t you just love couples in which one spouse is a judge, with all the power and prestige of judicial office, and the other spouse is rolling in dough? Off the top of our head, we can name a number of federal judges who have married well — or at least wealthy. (Like Judge Kimba Wood, above right, with her well-heeled hubby, Frank Richardson.)

We list some judges who have married into money, and we invite additional examples from you, after the jump.

Congress Mulls Salary Raise for the Judiciary [Daily Journal via How Appealing Extra]

Earlier: Skaddenfreude: Chief Justice to $318,200?