It isn’t easy getting a seat in a classroom at Harvard Law School. Len Elmore did. But then the 6-foot-9-inch student was choosey about the one he took. “I tried to sit on the end of the row,” he says. “There was more legroom.”
In a term likely filled with blockbuster cases, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency is an enigma: It could turn out to be unimportant and dismissed without a decision; it may be a major ruling on the scope of the EPA’s power; or it could be a huge decision about judicial review of agency decisions. The case, which was argued on Feb. 28, arose in an unusual procedural posture that may cause the court to dismiss it. But if the justices reach the merits, it could be a decision of great significance about environmental and administrative law.
This article was originally going to be about the dangers of TikTok (I’m not a fan), and I may still come back to that in a future column. But as I prepared to write, my research led me to a more general and widespread issue I felt compelled to cover.
Law had an attrition problem before the pandemic hit. Now it’s in hyperdrive, dovetailing with a wider movement of dissatisfied workers quitting their jobs in the wake of lockdown restrictions, in what economists have dubbed the “Great Resignation.”
Ari Kaplan recently spoke with Sang Lee, the CEO and co-founder of Thine, a technology company that develops and deploys prehiring and integration assessments. She is a lawyer and entrepreneur who has also owned and operated SJL Attorney Search and Volta Talent Strategies.
Where are the lawyers? As a retired one, I recently wondered about this, querying where in history we see lawyers mentioned and in what light? Actually, after thinking about it, I see little or no sign of lawyers for millennia.
As the United States was completing the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan in August, the American Bar Association began working to address the needs of Afghans. At first, this assistance came in the form of volunteer ABA members and staff preparing recommendation letters for evacuating Afghans seeking Special Immigration Visas. Simultaneously, individual ABA members and staff were preparing to provide pro bono legal assistance.
In almost 28 years on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer has been a moderate liberal on an increasingly conservative court. He has advocated interpreting statutes to achieve their purpose on a court that moved sharply away from that approach in favor of focusing on the plain language of laws. He has stressed looking at pragmatic real-world consequences on a bench that has become ever more ideological in its rulings. A former professor who specialized in administrative law, he has expressed the need for deference to the expertise of agencies at a time when more of the justices are openly hostile to the administrative state.
