Princeton, and oxford, and harvard for law, and served in the chambers of a law clark. All of our panelists this evening, clark for one judge or another in a decent circuit. All four of us. Its a good court. He was a great court. I was in the white house counsels office, and clinton administration. And the policy council as deputy director. She couldnt keep a job apparently. University of chicago law school, and then after getting tanya there she moved on inside at harvard. Not long after that became the dean of harvard law school. And then can get that job either. And became an associate solicitor general first, and then an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Judge uncle meyer at the far and, is in the district of new york, and has been since 2011. He came in the court on 20 twin. In 2011 in the southern district. He went to harvard, and to harvard for law school as well. Clerk for judge world on the d. C. Circuit. And was in the Solicitors Office with a solicitor general. And then was in private practice before going on the bench. And professor randall kennedy, to my left, who is a road scholar. Graduate of yellow law school. Also on the d. C. Circuit. Join the harvard faculty in 1984, and has been a very productive prolific author of books. Remarkably when most of his colleagues are writing arc to cool, shes writing books. And i thought of particular interest the American Academy of hearts in sizes, in the american philosophical association. So we have an array of three marshall clerks, for, including myself as well. I was there in 74 75. For d. C. Circuit clerics. And all of us, like virtually all of our other alumni, Justice Marshall chambers i think were very much affected in our careers and our lives by the experience of having in his chambers. And in close contact with him for a year. So were going to reminisce a little bit, if thats okay. Im not sure if there will be more to it than that. I hope that is of some interest. And so, i will start with you elena, unless you would like to pass. You didnt you did pass in class right . No never. Why dont you tell us about how your clerkship affected your career . Thats a big one. How it affected my career . I think clerk in on this court affects everybodys career, who doesnt, i mean its more than its just a fight. Its something that you put it on your resume in all of a sudden doors open. Sometimes justifiably so and sometimes not. But i think, you, know whats much more important to me is just how the experience of clerking for Justice Marshal affected who i was and what i thought was important. He was you couldnt survive a year in his chambers without realizing that there were things that you knew nothing about. And it was an eye opening experience in many respects, other than just learning about the law. And it gave you an appreciation for people who had fought for justice all their lives. In the importance of their work. Especially, his work. And it make you think about what you are doing and what you are doing it. And not that, you know, one could never hope to have a career that was sowed in so much justice seeking as he was. But i think his voice in my head never never went away, in terms of trying to figure out what i was doing and why. So you deal hear the call of knucklehead . Knucklehead wasnt a bad day. Sure he was on a good thing. laughs knucklehead you had to share with everyone else, surely was just yours. Paul . Do you have something on the same question about the arc of your career . Much of what she said, everything she said, i agree with. For my perspective if you came to the clerkship thinking about doing public service, and you spent a year with the greatest legal Public Center of the 20th century it would only ring employers that. Midway through the clerkship i spoke to him about applying to become an assistant u. S. Attorney not knowing how he would react to that. He was very delight, take he was enthusiastic. It turned out he was quite a big fan. And as it happened, by year three the four of us became assistant u. S. Attorneys right out of the clerkship. He was very encouraging of. That from my point of view, in addition to what alina said, hearing the stories about dry accords lit a fire under me to be a trial lawyer, and to engage with their craft of being in a courtroom. It reminded me of how important it was to know the facts and to know the record. One of the lessons you learn from just as marshall was that as important as the law was, facts are more important in most cases. Listening to the way he recounted the cases in his career and how decisive evidence. He really taught us as a lawyer that the craft of becoming one with the evidence. As a judge, i think about him almost every day. And i think about him in this context. I think about the defendants in my courtroom, the family members who are they are four sentences in pleads. In particular that this may be the only day for these people in which they are ever in a courtroom. And one of the things you learn from Justice Marshal is that you want to make sure that there is a decency and an honor and dignity that it tends to weigh in which the judge comport some self in court. So that for the people who are in a federal court for only one day in their life they leave feeling ennobled by the experience and treated fairly. That was very something something i learn from him and that i take with. Me and i have his picture up in my reception erie, in my chambers, its a picture of him on the steps of the Supreme Court on may 17th, 1954. And i walk in there every day, and i look at, it and it reminds me that we are in the justice business. I have a lithic graph of him as well in my office. Something that i am very pleased to have that i acquired not long after leaving the chambers. Randi . Well, he was a great pleasure working for Justice Marshall. Its made a big impact working for him has made a big impact on my career. I didnt know at the time that i was gonna be illegal academic but i turned out to be illegal academic. And one of the subjects that i right about is Race Relations law. And what could have been better preparation than working for Justice Marshal, long before he got on the bench before the civil rights. And over the course of the years, one of the rebenefits of working for him, was that he knew, he had seen everyone, he had many stories and he was very generous with his time. Very generous with his recollections. And i would just ask him lots of questions. And it turns out that much of what he shared with me became a views in my professional life as an academic. And still, very much of use. I say you have been drawn by mrs. Marshall. Welcome. Alayna i will come back to you if i may. Tell us about a memorable opinion of the justice . And whether you worked on it . Ill give you two, actually. One will be not surprising, and one maybe more surprising to folks. And both were the year that i clerk for Justice Marshall. We used to call him judge, we actually never called him just as marshall. So heres the one that maybe wont be so surprising. This was one that really brought on the knucklehead appalachian. It was a case called cutter moss, and it was about a school girl a ten year old, 12yearold girl in rural kansas, i believe it was. And she lived some miles away, more than 15 miles away, from the nearest school. And there was a bus service, but they made you pay. And they wouldnt give a waiver even for indigenous students, so there is old with that this cold didnt get to school. And there was a challenge brought to the fee schedule. The idea of a charging fees for the school bus, which was absolutely necessary for her to get to school. And it was a constitutional challenge broad under the equal protection clause. And we walked into his office, when i laid out the arguments and i said to him judge, i just think that its going to be hard for, i think her name was serena, to win. And he looked at me and said why . And i said well you know, indigenous sea is not a suspect class, and education is not a fundamental right. So that means rational basis applies and the state has a rational basis here. And he looked at me as the as though i must have lost my mind. Because his basic idea of what he was there to do was sort of to ensure that people like serena got to school every morning. And as long as he was gonna be on this court he was going to vote to make that happen. Wait dissented in that case, the jested descended, i think it was a six to three or a seven to two opinion. Most of the court decided the case, just as i basically laid it out to him. And Justice Marshall wrote a dissent. And the reason i say i was called knuckled hate quite a lot with this case is because of all the cases that i worked a lot, it was one that he was most passionate about. You know, the idea of, what moved him more than anything was trying to get rid of these entrenched inequalities in american life. This one didnt involve race but it was a little bit the same to him ,. ,. To i think one surprise you, but i think one that will surprise you is also that turn. It was a case called tories, and it was a group of hispanic employees that had brought unemployment discrimination suit. And they had lost, and they had filed an appeal. In the secretary to the lawyer handling the appeal left out one of their names on the notice of appeal that went up to the court and the question was whether of leaving out the name was going to mean that the court had a note jurisdiction to hear the appeal of this one employee of the group. The case came to us, and all the clerks thought this was an easy case, and the answer should be its just a secretarial misstep. And youre going to deprive this man of his claim . What a crazy thing. And in fact, this justice thought it was just crazy, and justice burn and descended from the case. But this martial ended writing the opinion for the court in that case. Saying that yes, in fact, the court did leaving out the name made all the difference. And the court did not have the jurisdiction to take the appeal. And this is what he said to us he said he spent his whole life litigating cases, and you cant expect anybody to bend the rules for you. The only thing you can expect is that they apply the rules straight. And indeed people you know people who litigated like i litigated their salvation was in the rules. I mean, if he had a chance for success it was because of the. Rules and because people decided to take those roles seriously. To him it was one of the most important principles for the justice system. Sometimes they worked with him, sometimes it with their own name, but in the end especially for people who were disliked in who were disadvantaged they needed the rules. And so you better make sure that youve created a system where the rules were there. And i dont think he convinced a single one of us, honestly. But, it was a powerful lesson for me actually. As much more so as listening to him talk about serena in the bus. And the importance of education. And the importance of eradicating inequality. This two, a powerful lesson about the importance of rules. And of law in our society. And even when sometimes it doesnt cut your way. Comment on those lines . Sure, there was one decision that i think he was most passionate about in our term. Which was at richmond versus carlson, a case in which to court adapted scrutiny for racial classifications, for affirmative action racial classification. And he was very, as you can imagine, distressed by the outcome there. One of the things was interesting to me was not just his fundamental point, that informative action is different from official racism. But his focusing. On the facts. He said to me, as the clerk assigned to the system on the case, i want to make it. Sure in the very first part of this decision, on the very first paragraph, that we make a point that this is the capital of the confederacy. And i wanna make a point that there is something ironic here about historically, the capital of. Confidentiality bending backwards to do something progressive about race. And that is what it we saw throughout the years. He was deeply knowledgeable as a historian, and he wanted to make sure we came out of the chambers with rich history and rich in social context. Thats one of the distinct memories i have. My favorite case. My favorite opinion from the justice is a concurring opinion. It was a concurring opinion in the case called baths versus kentucky. And in this disappearing court of the United States reversed and earlier with pinion, swinging versus alabama. The court said that cream cree challenges, a prosecutor use of privacy challenges was immune from question. And the defense attorney said he wanted to challenge the prosecutor used, saying they had been based on race. And the court said well, they are just immune from question. If a prosecutor is using them for a related reasons, any reason whatsoever, thats okay. Well, this two things about young exposed mean and baths for sikh kentucky. Yeah first of all, thought but thats weird because ive been on it all it was triggered night i went for by the justices use of descent a break worries teach from the social rural. Typical people dont Pay Attention to this, but the justice issued to sent after dissent, after descent. Basically to alert the bar that there were at least a couple of justices that were interested in the issue. And secondly, i think to educate and try to persuade his colleagues. And over the course of the year he succeeded. He succeeded in persuading other justices to come along with him and he triggered a reassessment of this case. And then the court agreed with his position, agreed to reverse but then the justice wasnt satisfied with. That he wrote a concurring opinion in which he say or gray with what the court is doing, but the court is not going foreign enough. They should get rid of these challenges all together. And he was pushing the envelope now brings a smile on my face and makes me think of thats the justice through the marshall. That i revere. Since you mention two sorts of opinions, ill mention one other. Its not just what opinion, it is a series. So Justice Marshall came to the conclusion, that Capital Punishment is in all circumstances a violation of constitutional standards. So he dissented, in all Capital Punishment cases, in which somebody was sentenced to death. And that stand to, its a stand that makes me salute him. Let me ask you to elaborate about that, because Justice Marshall and Justice Brennan reiterated that dissent in every case it came along. As opposed to, the tentative view that one something is settled, and whether dissented or were something or thats it. Was this do you think it was, was this because it was Justice Marshall or because it was Capital Punishment, or what was it about. I think it was largely because it was Capital Punishment, and just as marshall was such an unusual person. He had such a broad long very clear you know he had represented people who faced Capital Punishment and he had represented people, who were executed though they ought not to have been executed. He is a person who represent people who were put to death, though in fact they were innocent. And i think that has something to do with the fervency, and passion with which he saw this particular issue. There were many issues, in which he was deeply impassioned but none more so than the question of the government taking someones life. Can i get in on that. Please. I think it reflects a deeper view that he had, after all he was a lawyer who got plessy reversed in brown. And he would say to us, this is a living constitution, and when it matters we ought to not feel impeded from reassessing it. If you look at the speech he gave on the bicentennial of the constitution he says exactly that, and that the glory of the constitution is its amenability. That it was refreshing 1868, and it took too long a time but that eventually the court got it right. So absolutely. The Capital Punishment based on his own personal experience, as a criminal defense lawyer was something he care deeply about, but there is also a philosophical you not to be locked in to what he regarded as a wrong decision. Im not sure that everyone is fully aware, that the justice spent by far the better part of a larger part of his career, trying criminal cases. Defending rape and murder charges. Time after time in very unsafe venues for him. I remember once he said, he said when a jury brought back a sentence of life imprisonment, thats when he absolutely knew that the guy was innocent. laughs . A well he told a lot of stories, from that period and others in his life. Im not sure whether this was true, but his practice when i was there with bill brison, and Karen Hasting williams, was to come back from lunch, and come back into the bullpen three of us in one room, sit down on a leather easy chair, and start talking. Maybe for 30 or 45 minutes, virtually every day. And telling stories. And there was some repetition over the course of the year, but he had a huge repertoire. And those stories, were unforgettable. Was he doing that when you are there . He did, and he didnt so much come into the clerks office, but we would go into his office when we will talk about cases, and the way it typically works is that we will talk about whatever was on the court schedule. Many more cases that are now on the court schedule, about 140. 160 when i was there. Yes and, he will talk about the cases and then at some point we would be finished and he would segue, into what was sort of story time and injustices marshals chambers and it was the most unforgettable experience and my one regret of the year, was not one of us was smart enough to write them all down. Because im sure ive forgotten 95 of them. And i will tell you dog, i dont think he ever repeated one. It was remarkable. It was remarkable how many stories he had and how kind of how he remembered what he had been through before. But a lot of them i couldnt begin to capture a lot of it. He was really the greatest storyteller that ive ever come across. And it was a kind of make you make you laugh and make you weep, because a lot of the stories he told were pretty rough and pretty hard. And there were stories about, his boyhood. Stories about what it had been like to cris