Evan Caminker, Guido Calabresi, New York Times, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Reinhardt, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 5.6: Ann Arbor Amour

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Lawyers are taking over the NYT weddings section like mold on warm cheddar! Once again, we had a tough time picking three contestant couples from the horde of JDs this week. An unusually high number of law firm partners (and a GC) tied the knot (see here, here, and here for some that didn’t make the cut), and partly as a consequence, some younger associate-level couples were left out in the cold. LEWW even had to suck it up and cut one of our law school classmates from the finals!
Here are the carefully selected contestants:

1. Soogy Lee and Nathan Taft
2. Alyssa Qualls and John McCormick
3. Eve Brensike and Richard Primus

Continue reading about this week’s couples, after the jump.
(And if you haven’t already voted, don’t forget about the April Couple of the Month race — we’ll close the poll soon.)

1. Soogy Lee and Nathan Taft
(Buy them a gravy boat.)
The Case:
– Their resumes are very solid: She went to Hopkins and got a JD at Georgetown; he has both an undergrad degree and an MBA from Yale.
– The groom is the great-great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the former President, Chief Justice, and famous fat person.
– Note to Geordie Zug, a groom whose write-up mentions that he is the great-great-grandson of a United States representative from Troy, New York: Wow, Geordie — did you ever pick the wrong week to play the great-great-grandfather card! Nathan Taft is on his honeymoon somewhere, Mai Tai in hand, doubled-over with laughter at your piddling ancestor. (Soogy can join her new husband in the mockery, as she’s the granddaughter of a former vice premier of South Vietnam.)
The Case Against:
– Soogy “always hated dating,” and really, when you’re senior counsel in the bankruptcy and corporate restructuring group at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, who has the time? But the details of her first encounter with Nathan — afterward, she stumbled out of a restaurant in a champagne-addled haze, mumbling “Does anyone remember if he was cute or not?” — make us wonder if perhaps an eHarmony membership might have been money well spent, just to acquire some intro-level skills. Then again, she did end up snagging a presidential descendant, so who are we to judge?

2. Alyssa Qualls and John McCormick
(Buy them some place mats.)
The Case:
– Until last fall, the bride was an AUSA in Brooklyn; she’s now a litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis. But don’t assume she’s one of those humorless former-prosecutor partners who make you want to duck into a toilet stall and quietly drown yourself; after all, she got her JD from the coolest law school in America (she did her undergrad at Brown). And she’s very pretty.

– John, a Fulbright scholar, graduated from Queens College and earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago; He’s now a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Between the professorship, his picture, and his selected publications (Weber, Habermas and Transformations of the European State, etc., etc.) we think you can go ahead and assume he’s humorless. (Although he’s decent-looking, in a hairy, Miguel Sandoval kind of way.)
The Case Against:
– The groom’s mother is “a coat-check attendant at Alberto, a restaurant in Forest Hills, Queens.” Our initial thought upon reading this was “What a charming vignette about social mobility in America!” But then doubt crept in: Did the fancy-schmancy professor submit that humble description of his mom’s job as a subtle critique of the NYT’s emphasis on pedigree? Is he quietly mocking the exalted status of grooms like Nathan Taft, the proud son of the son of the son of a former president? John, we cannot countenance the subversion of all that we hold dear! On behalf of the Gray Lady, LEWW raps you on your hairy knuckles for this impertinence.

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3. Eve Brensike and Richard Primus
The Case:
– These two are frighteningly well-credentialed. Eve was magna at Brown and summa at Michigan Law (where sources tell us she racked up the highest GPA in the school’s history). Few suitors would be worthy of such a goddess, but Richard is one such academic Adonis: He was summa at Harvard, a Rhodes Scholar (at Balliol — another shout-out to Lord Peter!), and received a JD from Yale, where he undoubtedly would have been summa if Yalies understood Latin.
– Richard did time in the chambers of the Dark Elf, where he punched his ticket to a Ruth Bader Ginsburg clerkship. Eve, though not a member of the Elect, was no slouch herself in the clerkship department; she’s a former bleeding Reinhardt.
– Rumor has it that these two were set up by their boss, the luscious Dean Evan Caminker! As if Michigan faculty meetings weren’t already steamy enough, what with Caminker’s mega-hunkitude — now McDeany is playing Cupid? Kudos to the Michigan faculty and students for getting any work done amidst the torrid hormonal stew their school has become. UVA may be the nation’s coolest law school, but we nominate Michigan for the hottest!
The Case Against:
– In a troubling breach of their egalitarian values, the groom makes more money than his bride. Despicable! Why don’t you just bind her feet and chain her to a stove, Richard?
– We can’t find a wedding registry for these two. What are they, Communists? (Never mind, we don’t want to know.) Although Eve and Richard have apparently eschewed kitchen-related wedding booty, Google reveals that you can make a donation in the couple’s honor to MassEquality, an organization working for marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. (Isn’t that a bit like joining Augusta National and asking your friends to make a commemorative donation to NOW? We’re just sayin’ — we can think of more impressive displays of commitment to the cause.) You can also donate to the Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor in honor of Richard’s Jewish Day School education.
Update: We received an e-mail from a tipster, who passed along a juicy link to Richard and Eve’s wedding homepage, with the following commentary:

in order to sate your brensike-primus hunger, i give you their wedding homepage. you can get a look at the registry (and designated charities); the cold, awkward proposal and accompanying picture; and most important, a professorial tutorial on jewish wedding customs (if only one could employ the socratic method in web-form). it’s all pretty hilarious. oh, when nerdy law professors unite…

And apparently they did register for quite a bit of wedding booty! We apologize for calling them Communists. Buy them an ice cream scoop!
The Verdict:
We could have decided this matter on summary judgment. Congratulations, Professors Brensike and Primus!

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