October 18, 2012
On October 15, 2012, the Law School welcomed United States Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to campus. Justice Kagan began her day meeting with members of the faculty for lunch and a wide-ranging conversation about legal education and the work of the Court. She then spent an hour in Professor Deepa Varadarajan’s Introduction to Intellectual Property class, where she engaged in a spirited dialogue with students about her experiences on the Court and her approach to deciding cases. The centerpiece of her visit was a “conversation” with Dean Michael A. Simons before an audience of students and distinguished alumni and friends of the Law School in the Belson Moot Court Room.
Opening the program, Dean Simons welcomed the New York City native back to her hometown and then summarized her exceptional career in academia and public service, including her service as the first female dean of Harvard Law School and the first female Solicitor General of the United States, and culminating in her 2010 appointment by President Barack Obama as 100th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In each of her roles, Dean Simons said, Justice Kagan has earned a reputation for being a down-to-earth consensus builder with a powerful intellect and the ability to understand how the law and legal problems affect ordinary people. These qualities are evident in the clarity of her writing for the Court, even when addressing complex legal issues. The same qualities resonated in the Moot Court Room as Justice Kagan responded to Dean Simons’ questions about her career path. Reflecting on the start of her time in the law, she shared that she went to law school by default “for all the wrong reasons,” but found she loved it because she could see how “getting the law right” impacted people’s lives. Although she brought little direct experience to the jobs she took on, Justice Kagan said, she welcomed the “vertical learning curve,” enjoyed building new skills and benefitted from finding the right mentors.
When Dean Simons asked her about oral advocacy in the highest Court, Justice Kagan noted that the best oral advocates are well prepared to answer the hard questions and welcome the opportunity to address perceived holes or flaws in their argument. She also said that oral argument offers the nine Justices a preliminary forum for discussing the case and airing their viewpoints before they conference the case. As the conversation turned to the Court’s constituency and the unprecedented presence of three female Associate Justices, Justice Kagan said that having three women on the bench sends a positive message to society about the Court as an institution and about what women can accomplish.
Dean Simons then opened the floor to questions from students, who learned that, despite often sharp methodological differences, the current Court has “maintained its collegiality” as the Justices all like each other. Justice Kagan also shared that the hardest cases she has considered to date as an Associate Justice were two involving First Amendment issues; one concerned free speech and violent video games and the other false statements about military decorations. Closing the conversation, Justice Kagan shared that having one job to do for the rest of her life is something new for her. “It’s a long time to do an incredible job.”
“It is always wonderful to be in the presence of someone who has achieved so much in her professional life, but who still has the ability and desire to relate to every single person in the room with genuine interest, honesty and humor,” said Dean Simons. “It was an honor and a privilege to welcome Justice Kagan to the Law School. Our students appreciated and benefitted from her candor and will keep her in their minds and hearts as an example of what it means to be a consummate jurist.”
Reflecting on the experience, Megan Quail ’13 said: “I gained so much from being part of this important event. It was inspiring to hear how Justice Kagan took on her different professional roles by embracing the learning opportunities they offered. She was very open in sharing that there were times that she felt she had missed an opportunity and gone ‘off the path.’ But, she said, there was always something else around the corner. That is a very positive message to impart to law students.”