There’s A Secret Yale Law Group Chat About The Vances Because Of Course There Is

Somewhere out there is a Signal group full of Yale Law graduates, and they are still talking about law school -- or at least some of their classmates.

That's the detail that launched a thousand social media posts from Kate Andersen Brower's new Vanity Fair profile of the second lady, Usha Vance. The Vances' former Yale Law classmates have set up a private Signal group where they "safely compare notes" about the couple's improbable rise to MAGA royalty. The profile even lands the obligatory punchline -- assuming nobody accidentally adds Jeffrey Goldberg.

It is, frankly, perfect. Yale Law School has always run like the elite prep school in a CW drama: a small, incestuous, credential-obsessed universe where everyone knows everyone, proximity is currency, and the whisper network never sleeps. The Signal group is just Gossip Girl for people who bill in six-minute increments. The classmates even had a nickname for the couple -- "Judusha," a mash-up of JD, Usha, and "judicial." This needs to be studied as the pinnacle of what the kids are calling cringe these days.

And the group chat has THOUGHTS on Usha's role in MAGAland. It's "patronizing to say that she's been silenced," one friend tells Brower. "She has chosen this." All those brilliant people, years later, still trying to reverse-engineer a classmate they once sat next to in Contracts, as if Usha Vance were some enigma, and not the fully legible product of the Yale Law machine they'd all passed through. And that machine has a central figure that also played a key role in the rise of the house of Vance, Amy Chua.

The notorious Tiger Mom was reportedly sought out by both Vances. The professor was known for taking ambitious, immigrant-background students under her wing. It paid off, spectacularly. Chua was the self-described "authorial godmother" of Hillbilly Elegy: the person who read the opening pages JD emailed her, told him to write the book, and handed him her own literary agent. He thanked her by name in the acknowledgments. And Usha, for her part, landed the clerkships that cement elite legal careers -- Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit, and then Chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court.

Chua wasn't just a mentor, she was a member of the Yale Law clerkship committee, and in 2018 she became the story herself, when it emerged that she'd allegedly been coaching women students on how to present themselves for their Kavanaugh interviews -- telling them it was "no accident" the judge's female clerks "looked like models." Her husband, professor Jed Rubenfeld, was under investigation at the school at the same time, and had reportedly warned a student to avoid clerking for exactly two judges: Alex Kozinski and Brett Kavanaugh.

You may recall Kozinski retired abruptly, days after his clerks began resigning, as at least 15 women, many of them former clerks, came forward describing problematic behavior that had been whispered about him for years. And Kavanaugh, who clerked for Kozinski and stayed close to him for years, never squarely accounted for what he knew. Small wonder Yale students walked out, calling their own school a "model of complicity."

And during the controversial SCOTUS confirmation process for Kavanaugh, Chua's response was to defend Kavanaugh in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, hailing him as an extraordinary mentor to women on the strength of glowing emails from 10 former clerks. A year later, her own daughter clerked for Kavanaugh at the Supreme Court, an outcome we could all see coming.

This is the machine that produced Usha Vance. And here's where Brower's profile gets quietly devastating.

Because one of the explanations it offers for Usha's far-rightward turn is that she was reportedly appalled by how Kavanaugh, her old boss, was treated during his 2018 confirmation. A woman who clerked for Kavanaugh, mentored by the professor who spent years grooming clerks for Kavanaugh, radicalized by watching Kavanaugh get Kavanaughed. It is the most Yale Law villain origin story imaginable. The elite institution doesn't just hand you the credential. It hands you your grievances, too.

Earlier:Yale Prof Promotes Brett Kavanaugh's 'Extraordinary' Ability To Hire Her Daughter
Details On The Allegations Against, And Yale Law School Investigation Into, Professor Jed Rubenfeld
Yale Law Students Protest, Referring To School As 'Model Of Complicity' When It Comes To Sexual Harassment
Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: The Return Of The Tiger Cub Kavanaugh's Clerkship Quid Pro Quo Continues

---

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1