lawyer stuff

this article had me at hello. which was this photo. just look at it. (the print version is better)

the supreme court will soon hold the much anticipated hearing regarding the legality of the affordable heath care for america act, known colloquially as "obamacare". as is their way, conservatives are being unreasonable, demanding that justice elena kagan recuse herself on the grounds that she was obama's solicitor general when the bill was developed. additionally, after its passing, she expressed happiness via email to a colleague.

in the recent nymag issue, dahlia lithwick makes a compelling argument against this position, and illustrates the fascinating inner workings of the nation's highest court. it's definitely worth a read. here are a couple of my favorite parts:

The Supreme Court is currently experiencing what is known as an extremely “hot bench.” That’s a polite way of saying the justices ask so many questions at the one-hour session allocated to each case that counsel can’t get a word in. While new justices, in particular, often go silent during their first few weeks and months at the verbal roller derby (the soft-spoken Justice David H. Souter and the mild-mannered Justice Samuel Alito each asked very few questions in their first terms, and Thomas has not asked a question at oral argument for five years), the two new female justices are different.

...

Things got weird, though, when she pushed her comedic luck as the argument progressed. Sotomayor asked Kagan whether the law prohibiting Americans from offering “material support” for terrorist groups might bar Americans from “teaching these members to play the harmonica?” In other words, does teaching members of a terror group how to dig wells, or any other peaceful skills, really constitute aiding terrorists under the statute? Kagan couldn’t resist the joke: “The first thing I would say is there are not a whole lot of people going around trying to teach Al Qaeda how to play harmonicas,” she replied.

Scalia was having none of that rookie back talk. “Well, Mohammed Atta and his harmonica quartet might tour the country and make a lot of money,” he snapped.

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Back when she was the dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan evinced the same concern for civil discourse across ideological divisions. When she took over as the first woman dean there in 2003, she hired three conservative legal thinkers, including Goldsmith—who came from the Bush administration’s controversial Office of Legal Counsel—as well as Adrian Vermeule, who formerly taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and John Manning, who clerked for Scalia. She went out of her way to welcome conservative heroes (like Scalia) and conservative student groups to campus. In February 2005, the student branch of the Federalist Society held its national jamboree at Harvard. As legal legend Charles Fried described it last year in The New Republic, “Kagan rose to speak the host institutions’ words of greeting to the thousand or so Federalists assembled from every corner of the country. She was greeted by a long and raucous ovation. With a broad grin and her unmistakable Upper West Side twang, the former ­Clinton White House official responded, ‘You are not my people.’ This brought the dark-suited crowd of Federalist students to their feet in a roar of affectionate approval.” (via)