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Pam Karlan for Supreme Court

Posted by GayPatriotWest at 5:36 pm - May 4, 2009.
Filed under: Academia, Civil Discourse, Constitutional Issues, Supreme Court

Today, Glenn links a post by my law school Civil Rights Professor endorsing my favorite left-wing law professor to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

I have to agree with Glenn that, “We could do worse, and probably will.“

There would be few things more entertaining than to watch Pam Karlan go head-to-head with Justice Scalia on points of law.  I have met few lawyers with a mind as sharp as her and an appreciation for her adversaries’ opinions. She could offer the court’s most articulate conservative a run for his money.

After taking her Voting Rights’ class my First Year, it didn’t surprise me to learn how many conservative law students swarmed to her classes.

One of my peers, a member of Law Review and the Federalist Society, boasted that he had taken every course Karlan taught while he was at U-VA.  I recall in our Criminal Procedure class when she took fifteen minutes to debate a conservative student who took issue with her interpretation of a particular case.  She didn’t berate him.  She let him talk, then responded to his points rationally and respectfully.  He thanked her for her consideration.

When I directed the Federalist Society’s Annual Symposium held at U-VA in 1994, one of our liberal speakers had to cancel at the last minute.  The only solution we could come up with to keep the ideological balance on that panel was to ask Karlan to step in–meaning she’d be on two panels at the national conference of a conservative/libertarian law group.

She agreed.Even with limited preparation, she offered an informed opinion and participated in a spirited discussion.

Pam Karlan was everyone’s ideal of what a law professor should be.  She came well prepared to class, didn’t shirk from expressing her opinion, but she showed respect for those at odds with it.  She spoke more than once to our chapter of the Federalist Society, debating Clint Bolick to a standing-room only crowd and dining with our members to discuss the legal philosophy of her friend Lani Guinier whom then-President Clinton appointed as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1993 before withdrawing the nomination.

Bill Stuntz, my former Civil Rights law professor cites Karlan’s gifts as a writer: “I know no one else who can turn out so much work that is so pleasing to read. Plus, she can be devastatingly funny. That is a recipe for the kind of influence that lasts.“

Not only could she write well, but she could speak well, often interrupting her lectures with a humorous interjection.  When we were discussing one case where she had argued for one side (I believe it was the losing side) before the Supreme Court, she said as much, then perhaps thinking she had been immodest to mention that, looked up from her notes and said that we should all argue before the Supremes at least once in our lives as it’s the “most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

Pam Karlan is an accomplished scholar, a good writer, but more importantly a good person.  It would be a feather in the President’s cap if he nominated someone who, throughout her career, has shown such respect for her ideological adversaries.  Coupled with her gifts as a legal scholar, that respect should earn her a berth on the nation’s highest court.

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12 Comments »

  1. If her taxes are in order, she won’t get selected by Obama.

    Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 4, 2009 @ 6:11 pm - May 4, 2009

  2. “It would be a feather in the President’s cap if he nominated someone who, throughout her career, has shown such respect for her ideological adversaries.”

    If she truly treats opponents with respect, you can be sure that this is a major disqualifier for her in this administration.

    Comment by Craig — May 4, 2009 @ 6:35 pm - May 4, 2009

  3. this is interesting. in your view, what makes her a better choice than kagan or wood, both of whom have academic resumes that rival karlan’s?

    Comment by chad — May 4, 2009 @ 6:39 pm - May 4, 2009

  4. Last Friday, Rush had Obama speaking at various times on his core beliefs about a Supreme Court Justice. Read it and weep:

    OBAMA JULY 2007:  We need somebody who’s got the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be uh, a — a — a young teenaged mom. Uh, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled.

    OBAMA NOVEMBER:  Sometimes we’re only looking at academics or people who have been in the courts.  If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that’s the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.

    OBAMA:  What I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can’t have access to political power, and as a consequence, can’t protect themselves from being dealt with sometimes unfairly.

    OBAMA:  If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and — and order and, as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in the society.

    OBAMA:  As radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted, and one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.  And in some ways we still suffer from that.

    Comment by heliotrope — May 4, 2009 @ 7:23 pm - May 4, 2009

  5. “We could do worse, and probably will.“ Yes, I fully expect Associate Justice Sharpton will be on the court by this time next year…

    Comment by Kevin — May 4, 2009 @ 7:31 pm - May 4, 2009

  6. “If Obama wants to appoint a Scalia for the left, he should choose Pam Karlan, a longtime colleague of mine at Virginia who now teaches at Stanford. Pam is (1) brilliant, (2) broadly knowledgeable — Cass Sunstein aside, I can’t think of anyone who knows so much about so many different legal fields — and (3) a spectacularly gifted writer.” [William Stuntz]

    [W]e must also acknowledge that it is quite likely Obama will (and really should) pick a woman to join lonely RBG on the bench. If this is the case, then I’d like to endorse Pam Karlan, Stanford Law professor, brilliant con law scholar, [and] experienced Supreme Court advocate, to be the next Justice. Among other things, Karlan is genuinely funny–I mean, really truly funny–and could likely not only give Scalia a run for his money as the justice who gets the most laughs from the bench, but also put Scalia in his place by showing him what someone who is really funny–and not just using his high perch to make people feel uncomfortable–sounds like from the bench. [Jay Wexler]

    Comment by John Adams — May 4, 2009 @ 8:36 pm - May 4, 2009

  7. Yes, I fully expect Associate Justice Sharpton will be on the court by this time next year…

    True. Tawana Brawley and “diamond merchants” could only enhance one’s resume. Although, I think Justice Wright or Justice Ayers is more likely.

    Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 4, 2009 @ 10:24 pm - May 4, 2009

  8. #4: heliotrope, while I appreciate you taking the time to post the list of Obama quotes, as a lawyer, I assure you, reading them is the intellectual equivalent of…I dunno…spending the afternoon having my teeth pulled out with a pair of pliers…enjoying a bowl of guacamole using broken shards of glass for chips…setting both of my ears on fire…

    I’m not sure which is more shocking, that this is apparently what they are teaching students at Harvard Law School, or that this man has been allowed to TEACH Constitutional Law. Unbelievable.

    Comment by Sean A — May 5, 2009 @ 3:26 am - May 5, 2009

  9. I find it interesting that no commenter has any substantive objections to Pam Karlan. Generic bile against Obama doesn’t count.
    Chad – Karlan is a constitutional lawyer by trade who has also written extensively on election law and has briefed issues related to same-sex marriage. Kagan is a successful administrator, before that law professor, but without Karlan’s flair for writing and depth of constitutional knowledge. Both have records of successfully reaching out to conservatives.

    Comment by John Adams — May 5, 2009 @ 10:45 am - May 5, 2009

  10. #9 – “I find it interesting that no commenter has any substantive objections to Pam Karlan.”

    True, because we are not emotionally geared to rhetorical arguments the way those on the left side of the aisle are.

    “Generic bile against Obama doesn’t count.”

    Of course not. What we do is document the facts and report them. Stupid is as stupid does.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

    Comment by Peter Hughes — May 5, 2009 @ 12:22 pm - May 5, 2009

  11. Respect goes a long way. Pam Karlan is a class act, and I hope she will be the one to bring some humanization of LGB people to SCOTUS. I wish my fellow conservative Americans would learn to have more respect for opposing-but-open-minded views. I think conservatives would still be in power if our leaders had tried to turn our adversaries into our friends rather than enemies. We live and learn, I suppose.

    Comment by Erin — May 11, 2009 @ 3:48 am - May 11, 2009

  12. [...] This kind of confirms my impression of her from what I’ve read in the weeks since the President announced her nomination.  She seems to lack the intelletual firepower of the two Justices most recently appointed to the Court.  And that of such distinguished would-be Obama nominees like Pam Karlan. [...]

    Pingback by GayPatriot » Ah! the benefits of summer Supreme Court confirmation hearings(not all that many people paying attention) — July 15, 2009 @ 3:07 am - July 15, 2009

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