In an unexpected and delightful twist, Justice Stephen G. Breyer didn’t just step to the podium and deliver a speech at the close of this year’s Annual Dinner, but instead took a seat at a table with Director Lance Liebman and President Roberta Cooper Ramo for an informal Q&A-style chat.
Justice Breyer and Director Liebman met when both men were teaching at Harvard Law School. And it was memories of those teaching days that started the evening as Justice Breyer elicited laughs by recalling on of Director Liebman’s habit of getting comfortable with students by quickly doffing any jacket he happened to be wearing.
For a while, the conversation centered on reminiscing about their Harvard days, but then Director Liebman grew more serious and talked about the current state of legal education, including the skyrocketing costs of securing a law degree in the United States and the failure of the profession to deliver affordable legal services to many low- and middle-income Americans.
Justice Breyer talked of his concern that the students he speaks to these days see the justices as “junior varsity politicians.” Hoping to dispel that view, he offered his argument that Alexander Hamilton and the other founders wisely gave the power of judicial review and interpretation of the Constitution to the one branch of government that lacks the power of the purse and the power of the sword.
President Ramo picked up the conversation, drawing first on her own experiences as a young woman lawyer who was rejected by law firms because of her gender and found a job teaching constitutional law at a historically black college during the time when the power of the law and the courts was evident in the advances won in the civil rights movement. She drew a link to the work being done right now by the American Law Institute, noting that in sessions earlier in the day on torts projects, there was a robust debate among judges, academics, and practitioners in tackling difficult issues.
Justice Breyer echoed those remarks by talking of the cycle of work that he observes as judges write opinions, academics interpret them and practitioners apply those interpretations in courts.