Notes & Renderings The Supremes at NYU
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he NYU School of Law was privileged during this past academic year to host three sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justices—the Honorable Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy (pictured here from left to right). Justice Thomas recalled his grandmother’s reaction when he was accepted by an Ivy League law school: “That’s nice,” she said. “But when are you going to stop going to school?” Justice Kennedy shared his strategy for reading dense legal briefs: opera music. Some cases require just one opera, while others are two-opera briefs, he said. Justice Scalia, for his part, believes rights specifically mentioned in the constitution must be protected—no matter his personal feelings about the issue. “I don’t like scruffy liberals burning the American flag. But the original constitution prevented incarceration for this act,” he explained. Thomas came to the Law School last September and introduced the inaugural lecture for the An-Bryce Scholarship Program— which provides full-tuition to law students who are among the first in their immediate family to pursue a graduate degree. In April, Kennedy introduced Samuel Estreicher, the inaugural lecturer for the Dwight D. Opperman chair and spent the afternoon with students teaching a class and holding a lively question-and-answer session. On the Court, Kennedy has confronted cultural issues ranging from the death penalty to gay rights—topics far removed from his course of study in law school, and he expressed some surprise at how things turned out. “I thought I’d be interpreting the tax code,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d be addressing when life begins or the nature of privacy.” In 2003 Kennedy delivered the Supreme Court’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which held that laws banning consensual sodomy are unconstitutional. One student expressed gratitude for that ruling. “I never thought I’d be in a room with such a personal hero,” said the man. “So I just want to say thank you for what you wrote in Lawrence.” Scalia also visited this past April, accepting an invitation from students on the board of the 62nd Annual Survey of American Law, which dedicated this year’s volume to him. While
THE LAW SCHOOL
on his 12-hour sweep through the campus, Scalia taught a constitutional law class, lunched with faculty, engaged students in an overflowing Q&A session and was the guest of honor at the Annual Survey dedication ceremony and dinner.
When Scalia fielded questions at the Q&A, he was, true to his reputation—funny, charming, critical and full of conviction for his self-described restrictive interpretation of the constitution. “People are always asking me, ‘When did you first become an originalist?’ As though it were a weird affliction like eating human flesh,” he said. He went on to explain that his view stems from the “originalist” concept that judges shouldn’t read protections into the constitution that aren’t explicitly included in the document. The
Torture Papers Makes a Mark
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ruth, as Virgil wrote in The Aeneid, is enveloped in obscurity. But The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, a 1,300page compilation of declassified government memoranda edited by Karen Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security, and attorney Joshua L. Dratel, penetrates the fog. The book traces the development of the Bush administration’s policy on torture in stark, unflinching prose. Published by Cambridge
University Press in late January, it arrived within weeks of the blazing national controversy over the U.S. Department of Justice’s attempt to change its definition of torture. The massive tome has had far-reaching impact on politics and culture, and created a stir even before its official release. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that
AUTUMN 2005