[O]ne is a practicing polygamist, and he’s not even the Mormon.
– Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, commenting on the differences between leading Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich during a speech at the Alfalfa Club.
David and Sandra have enjoyed it. I kind of like not having to read a lot of briefs and get reversed by my former colleagues.
– Justice John Paul Stevens, in a humorous quip about the willingness of his fellow retired justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and David H. Souter, to sit by designation on the circuit courts.
(Justice Stevens just published a new book — Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (affiliate link) — to coincide with the start of the latest Term of SCOTUS, which got underway this week. Adam Liptak of the New York Times praises the memoir as “engaging and candid.”)
People, here at LEWW we hate reality TV. Really, really, really hate it. It makes us feel bored, uncomfortable, and grossed-out by humanity, all at the same time. We can watch sports, which we suppose is “reality” in some sense, but other non-scripted programming sends us lunging for the remote. Dancing with the Stars? Gagging at the concept. Jersey Shore? Never seen it; sounds appalling. Even the Food Network is too real for us.
And of course, just thinking about those reality wedding shows makes us break out in hives. That said, we are going to be all over the upcoming royal wedding. Step back, Chelsea, this one is going to be the real deal, and LEWW is already counting the days until April 29. Now, to find a legal angle . . . .
On to this week’s couples. We have four finalists for this special Thanksgiving edition of LEWW:
Audrey Christopher and Trevor Austin
Tali Farhadian and Boaz Weinstein
Read more about these couples, after the jump.
* GlaxoSmithKline will pay $750 million — yup, that’s right, three-quarters of a billion — to settle charges of adulterated drugs. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Sure, Citizens United lets corporations get more active in politics — but it lets unions in, too. [ChamberPost]
* Reading between the lines: an annotated law firm departure memo. [Last Day at the Office Emails]
* Federal jurisdiction is a useful class — especially if you’re looking for the perfect crime scene. [Now I Know and SSRN (Brian Kalt)]
* Back in my ancestral homeland, the Philippine Supreme Court is responding to one scandal by creating another. [Opinio Juris]
* Vote for the top business law blog of 2010. [LexisNexis (via FCPA Professor)]
* Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on aging: “I turned 80, I don’t even like to say the word.” [Stanford University News]
* Some highlights from my talk yesterday in Philadelphia to the Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group, courtesy of Laura Powers. [The PR Lawyer]
I would make Mexican food and get some beer and have everyone over for dinner.
– Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, explaining how she would achieve legislative consensus among state senators in Arizona, in remarks to Cardozo law students over the weekend.
In December we announced a contest for ATL readers. We called upon you to play Do I Have A Right?, one of the educational video games launched by Our Courts. Today we’re pleased to announce the winners.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Our Courts is “a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy.” It was the brainchild of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (who spoke with us about Our Courts for this Washington Post piece).
Above the Law’s “Do I Have A Right?” tournament was a huge success, with 8,650 plays from nearly 7,500 unique players. People logged games in 49 states — c’mon, North Dakota, where’s the love? — and the average play time was 7:55 minutes.
Justice O’Connor was very pleased:
I want to congratulate the winners of the Our Courts – Above the Law Tournament. I was thrilled by the participation and interest in our game. It just goes to show that even trained lawyers can always use a refresher course in middle school civics.
And who were the winners? There were two, tied with a high score of 13,653. The first was David Cohen, a sports lawyer in Southern California. The second was “Anonymous,” who chose to remain nameless “so that people he knows don’t think he spends all his time [in the office] playing DIHAR.”
These winners will be featured as characters in a future Our Courts game. Speaking of Our Courts, they have a new game out, Argument Wars, which allows players to argue landmark Supreme Court cases. The preview case allows readers to argue Brown v. Board of Education; two more cases will launch next Monday, and two more by mid-February.
The full list of high scorers in the DIHAR challenge — perhaps you know some of them? — appears after the jump.
Continue reading “The ATL ‘Do I Have A Right?’ Challenge:
Congratulations from Justice O’Connor”
Back in October, we wrote a piece for the Washington Post about retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s new educational video games. She’s spearheading a project called Our Courts, which seeks to improve civic education in middle schools. One game, Supreme Decision, lets the kiddies weigh in on a First Amendment case in the Supreme Court. The other, Do I Have A Right? (DIHAR), lets players start a law firm and serve clients with constitutional issues.
The subject of law firm management is a subject near and dear to many ATL readers’ hearts. We have noticed that commenters often have many suggestions for how it can be done better. So we have decided to put you to the test with a DIHAR tournament.
The winner of the tournament will get more than just bragging rights. The award for the ATL reader with the highest score is a starring role in an upcoming Our Courts game.
More information, plus complete contest rules, after the jump.
The Associated Press reports that John J. O’Connor III died today at 79 of complications arising from Alzheimer’s disease.
John and Sandra Day O’Connor met as law students at Stanford.
The O’Connors were married in 1952 and became a leading couple on Washington’s social scene when they moved from Arizona in 1981 following her confirmation as the first woman on the Supreme Court.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2005 in order to care for her husband as his Alzheimer’s disease worsened.
Husband of retired Justice O’Connor dies [Associated Press]
Justice O’Connor’s Husband Dead at 79 [BLT]
Sandra Day O’Connor’s Husband Dies [Washington Post]
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is not really retired yet. “I am more busy in retirement than before,” she told Above the Law in a recent interview. One of her myriad projects is Our Courts, a non-profit organization that develops Web-based games to teach seventh- and eighth-graders about government. We spoke with Justice O’Connor recently for our piece for the Washington Post reviewing the games.
We had hoped to actually play the games with her, but it turns out she’s not much of a gamer. Not being the computer type, she hasn’t actually played the Web-based games herself. “I watched young people play it. They have a lot of fun. They’re actively engaged. I think it’s very exciting,” she told us.
Justice O’Connor has been touring the country to promote the games. She even stopped in to chat with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. We got to catch up with her via conference call last month. We rung her up at One First Street — like some retired Biglaw partners, retired SCOTUS justices get to keep an office. After her secretary connected us, Justice O’Connor answered the phone: “Sandra Day O’Connor.”
We discovered that O’Connor is adamant about bringing an end to the election of judges in America. Read more from our interview, after the jump.
Last year, we wrote about retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor entering a new field: video game development. She’s spearheading a project called Our Courts, which seeks to improve civic education in middle schools. The Our Courts website officially launched in January of this year.
The first two games, “Supreme Decision” and “Do I Have A Right?”, went live this summer. The Washington Post contacted us and asked us to review them. We played Nintendo, Oregon Trail, and Carmen Sandiego growing up, and we spent a recent Friday night at Elie’s playing Rock Band, so we were willing to give the Our Courts game a go.
Check out our review of the games, along with additional reflections on civic education and public access to the courts, in this Washington Post piece: Educational? You Be the Judge.
While Lat was in D.C., he swung by the Washington Post’s offices to talk about the games. Check out his star turn in the video after the jump.
Former SCOTUS Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is on a mission to educate. As reported last summer, she’s working with Georgetown University and Arizona State University on a “free, interactive, web-based program designed to teach and engage students in civics.” It’s called Our Courts, and it’s now live.
By having civics lessons in the form of online games, O’Connor hopes to trick the kids into thinking they’re having fun while they learn about the court system and constitutional rights. It brings back fond memories of The Oregon Trail, and an excuse to play video games in class. Though to be honest, we can’t remember what we really learned from that game, beyond the immense satisfaction of shooting down buffalo.
The site did a half-launch back in the fall, and has since re-designed. The games are still not live, but are promised by the start of the 2009 school year. This was the original home page (we’ve pointed out some elements that we wouldn’t want you to miss):
That design is no more. Out with the old, in with the new:
Somehow, the avatars are cuter than the real kids. Which home page do you prefer?
Our Courts: 21st Century Civics
Earlier: Sandra Day Gets Her Game On
It has been a while since our last Eyes of the Law legal celebrity sighting, so here’s a fun one for your consideration. A D.C. tipster tells us:
We saw Sandra Day O’Connor in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibit on Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams. She had on the same red sweater she can be seen wearing in photos dating from the late ’90′s hanging on the wall at Georgetown. I guess the retired justice pension package isn’t as generous as I thought. Or she just really likes that sweater.
SOC was accompanied by two women in their late 20′s or early 30′s… possibly granddaughters, possibly ex-clerks. We didn’t detect any particular resemblance — neither was wearing a red sweater that looked as though it might have been knitted or handed down from grandma.
Old people and museums: perfect together. Please pass the Bengay.
Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities [Smithsonian American Art Museum]
Back in July 2005, shortly after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her resignation from the Supreme Court, Professor Orin Kerr wrote an L.A. Times op-ed about how the Court might be affected by her departure. Its provocative title: O’Connor’s Successor Will Likely Be a Swinger.
We were reminded of Professor Kerr’s op-ed when we read this piece, by SOC biographer Joan Biskupic, in USA Today:
Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, has found a new romance, and his happiness is a relief to his wife, an Arizona TV report reveals.
The report, which quoted the couple’s oldest son, Scott O’Connor, focused on Alzheimer’s patients who forget their spouses and fall in love with someone else. Experts say the scenario is somewhat common.
[T]he report spotlighted John O’Connor, 77. He and the woman, referred to only as “Kay,” live at a Phoenix facility for people with Alzheimer’s.
A lesser woman might be troubled by the December-December romance. But Justice O’Connor, who understands the nature of her husband’s devastating illness, is fine with it — in fact, more than fine:
“Mom was thrilled that Dad was relaxed and happy and comfortable living here and wasn’t complaining,” Scott, 50, told KPNX-Channel 12 in Phoenix in a story that aired Thursday. The station is owned by Gannett, as is USA TODAY….
Scott compared his father to “a teenager in love” and said, “For Mom to visit when he’s happy … visiting with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch swing holding hands,” was a relief after a painful period.
In any event, Justice O’Connor is too busy with her own work to be consumed by petty jealousies. Her busy schedule of meetings and speaking engagements has kept her on the road, both nationally and internationally. Recently she was in Paris — c’est magnifique!
Earlier today, SOC spoke at Columbia Law School. A report on her visit appears after the jump.
Warmest congratulations to our friends Junko Ozao and Jason Choy, whose lovely wedding was written up in this week’s Vows column. Jason is an associate at Kirkland & Ellis, but Junko is a normal person, and that shortcoming cost them a spot in this week’s Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. The news will likely ruin their three-week honeymoon, but such are the ruthless decisions our readers expect LEWW to make.
Here are the six finalists (all lawyers):
1.) Amanda Trivax and Brian Burnovski
2.) Anna Skotko and Ben Vonwiller
3.) Amy Tovar and Benjamin Horwich
More about these legal eagles, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 9.30.07: Shall We Dance?”
This just in from One First Street. The Associated Press reports:
The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long- awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The opponents of the act “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
The decision pitted the court’s conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush’s two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.
This ruling lends support to those who predict — like Jan Crawford Greenburg, in Supreme Conflict — that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will move the Court significantly to the right in the years ahead. Before Justice Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a decision like this one would have required the conservatives to secure TWO swing votes, AMK and SOC, instead of just one. That frequently doomed the conservatives to defeat in the big-ticket cases.
So Justice Alito, appointed to the Court by President Bush, probably made all the difference here. As Senatrix Barbara Boxer recently observed: “Elections have consequences.”
Update: For more detailed commentary, check out Lyle Denniston’s SCOTUSblog post, which quotes extensively from Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent. To read the opinion itself, click here (PDF).
Court Backs Ban on Abortion Procedure [Associated Press]
Court upholds federal abortion ban [SCOTUSblog]
Gonzales v. Carhart (PDF) [SCOTUSblog]
Senator Boxer: Elections Have Consequences [YouTube]
Newsweek has an interesting article about retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The gist of the piece is that even though Justice O’Connor is longer on the Court, she’s still extremely busy. Since her SCOTUS retirement, she has served on the Iraq Study Group, which published its report not too long ago; sat by designation on circuit courts (by our count, at least three — the Second, Eighth, and Ninth); worked on books; and delivered speeches, including vigorous defenses of “judicial independence.”
The most noteworthy material concerns the timing of Justice O’Connor’s departure from the Court:
O’Connor carefully weighed when to quit the bench. In the spring of 2005, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist publicly battling thyroid cancer, the two justices discussed timing. “We talked a little bit,” O’Connor recalls. “I was concerned about whether he had an intention to step down since his plans might have altered my own. It’s hard for the nation to grapple with two [retirements] at once,” she says. “He indicated he didn’t want to step down.” So she realized she had to go first.
And so she did, announcing her retirement on July 1, 2005. As it turned out, however, Chief Justice Rehnquist passed away about two months after SOC stepped down. So the nation did end up having to deal with two vacancies at the same time. (Then-Judge John Roberts was moved over to the Chief spot, after being nominated initially as an Associate Justice, and Judge Samuel Alito was subsequently appointed to replace Justice O’Connor.)
The article also reports unfortunate news concerning Justice O’Connor’s husband, John Jay O’Connor III:
After O’Connor was freed from her daily duties at the court—it took six months before Alito took her seat—John’s condition deteriorated. Last summer she reluctantly placed him in a care center near their home in Phoenix; she visits him often. “It’s such a miserable disease. It’s so sad. It’s so hard. I did the best I could,” she says. “He wants me there all the time.”
Justice O’Connor’s departure has left a void on the Court. And we’re not talking about making Justice Kennedy even more of an influential swing vote.
What we want to know is: Now that SOC is away from One First Street most of the time, who leads the morning aerobics classes at the Supreme Court gym — as Justice O’Connor used to do, on a daily basis before she retired? Although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a cheerleader in her youth, she no longer seems like the aerobicizing type.
And don’t look to SOC’s replacement, Justice Samuel Alito. We adore Justice Alito as a jurist. But we don’t think we’re alone in not wanting to see him in spandex.
Justice: Bench Player [Newsweek via WSJ Law Blog]
Or actually, “I’m missing you already.” Supreme Court justices have feelings too, y’know.
The former cheerleader and current Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader “Kiki” Ginsburg, misses having a “wing-woman” when she visits the highest ladies’ room in the land. Per Joan Biskupic of USA Today:
It’s been a year since Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court after a quarter-century tenure and left Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the lone woman on the nine-member court. Although it’s unclear how O’Connor’s departure will affect the law, this much is certain: Ginsburg misses her friend, and worries about the message court visitors get when they see only one woman on the bench.
“The word I would use to describe my position on the bench is lonely,” Ginsburg, 73, said in an interview with USA TODAY.
“This is how it was for Sandra’s first 12 years,” she said, citing the time from O’Connor’s appointment in 1981 to Ginsburg’s arrival in 1993. “Neither of us ever thought this would happen again. I didn’t realize how much I would miss her until she was gone.”
Awww…. Isn’t that cute? Who knew that someone who spent 13+ years dealing with admin law could be so sentimental?
(We aren’t joking about the supreme judicial ladies room. As indicated here by Jan Crawford Greenburg, aka the Eve Harrington of One First Street, the justices’ robing room has a women’s bathroom — even though it didn’t back when Justice O’Connor first joined the Court.)
Ginsburg ‘Lonely’ Without O’Connor [USA Today]
Madame Justice [Legalities via How Appealing]
One of you recently commented: “Retire this feature until the spring, dude. No one gets married in December.”
We beg to differ — unless you consider one of the Elect to be a nobody. A surprisingly high number of lawyers got hitched on the weekend before New Year’s Day. We even had to make some cuts.
Here are the three couples from the December 30-31 weekend that we will review:
1. Margaret Cimino, Jaime Wolf
Random aside: The best tidbit from the December 31 wedding announcements appeared in the write-up for two non-lawyers, Darcy Wolcott and Thomas Proctor:
Mr. Proctor’s forebears, the Hood and Towne families, settled the towns of Topsfield and Ipswich, Mass., in the early 1600′s. One ancestor, Mary Towne Easty, was hanged as a witch in 1692 in Salem.
If you can claim an ancestor who was executed for being a witch, you get an automatic 10 for your “Family” score.
Scores and commentary for the newlywed lawyer couples, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: December 31, 2006″
Who knew that jurisdiction in the patent context could cause judicial tempers to flare? In MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., an 8-1 decision handed down earlier this week, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas — who voted together almost 90 percent of the time last Term — exchanged harsh words.
Justice Scalia wrote the opinion of the Court, holding that a patent licensee doesn’t have to terminate or breach its license agreement before suing to challenge the patent’s validity. Justice Thomas dissented, finding no standing to sue.
From a tipster:
Scalia’s MedImmune opinion disembowels Thomas’s dissenting arguments one by one. See footnote 6 (“This is demonstrably false.”). Or footnote 9 (“It obviously is not.”).
One of my kids takes Synagis (a very very expensive medication), which is why I read the decision. While patent law is not my practice area, Scalia’s scorn is very clear and understandable to even a patent law layperson.
Now, Justice Thomas doesn’t take all this lying down. He accuses Justice Scalia of “misread[ing] our precedent,” “inappropriately rel[ying]” upon various cases, and committing “serious error.”
But this match must be scored for Scalia. Some other goodies (all in the footnotes, of course, where judges get to be catty and not feel guilty about it):
Footnote 2: “The dissent contends that the question on which we granted certiorari does not reach the contract claim. We think otherwise.”
Footnote
56: “[The dissent would be correct] only if the license required royalties on all products under the sun, and not just those that practice the patent. Of course it does not.”
In other words: “CT, get your head out of your ass!”
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor used to take criticism from Justice Scalia rather personally. But she should have realized that with Justice Scalia, it’s really not personal. To paraphrase what our mother told us in second grade, “Nino only picks on you ’cause he likes you.”
P.S. To be sure, we suspect Justice Scalia doesn’t think very highly of Justice O’Connor as a judicial thinker — in contrast to, say, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom he can respect even when they disagree.
MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. [FindLaw]
Court rules on right to bring patent case [SCOTUSblog]
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
* What will become of Justice O’Connor’s precedent? [
