law briefs A Supreme Conversation Dean Blake D. Morant and GW President Steven Knapp flank Justice Elena Kagan.
GW Law Professor Brad Clark and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan
U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Elena Kagan doesn’t consider that she was destined for the nation’s highest bench. In fact, she told a packed audience at Lisner Auditorium that she went to law school “for all the wrong reasons.” “All of my career has been like that—a lot of serendipity, a lot of chance,” she said during a relaxed—and often funny—on-stage conversation with GW Law Professor Bradford R. Clark, a longtime friend. The
YOU ARE THE FUTURE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, SO TO THE EXTENT WE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH YOU, WE’RE SHAPING THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEGAL THOUGHT. – Justice Elena Kagan
event, held in honor of Constitution Day, closed the law school’s yearlong 150th anniversary celebration. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Justice Kagan clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, the pioneering former civil rights attorney and first African American to serve on the Supreme Court. She described it as a “heady experience.” “He was one of the few people to have served as a Supreme Court justice who would have been in the history books without being a Supreme Court justice,” Justice Kagan said. “You sit there and you realize that you’re working for one of the icons of American law—a hugely influential figure in American history.” After her clerkship, Justice Kagan worked for a few years as an associate at D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly, then taught at the University of Chicago Law School. She served as an adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999, first as associate White House counsel and then as deputy
assistant to the president for domestic policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. Subsequently, she became a visiting professor and, eventually, the first female dean at Harvard Law School. In 2009, President Obama selected her as the first female solicitor general— the lawyer who argues for the federal government before the country’s highest courts. At the time, Justice Kagan had never before argued a case in an appellate court. Her first argument was on the government’s behalf in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a landmark campaign finance case before the Supreme Court. “I have a pretty reasonable opinion of myself—I’m not suffering in the selfesteem department,” she said, recalling the moments before she took the podium. “But my heart was pounding.” Justice Kagan said she barely finished the first sentence of her argument when Justice Antonin Scalia leaned over the bench, booming, “No, no, no, no, no!” “That kind of got me into it,” she said, laughing. Justices Kagan and Scalia were close friends until his death in February 2016, going on frequent hunting trips together. She said Justice Scalia’s famously scathing and eloquent opinions were written with law students in mind. “You are the future of the legal profession, so to the extent we can communicate with you, we’re shaping the next generation of legal thought,” she told audience members, a majority of whom were firstyear students from GW Law. 2017 | www.law.gwu.edu
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