Posted by Orin Kerr:
Frank Rich, Clarence Thomas, and the Missouri Assistant Attorney General:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_07-2007_10_13.shtml#1191763246
In today's New York Times, Frank Rich has a [1]rather nasty essay that
purports to catch Justice Thomas misrepresenting his past. The
specific example is Justice Thomas's first job out of law school in
the Missouri Attorney General's Office. As Justice Thomas tells the
story, he couldn't get a job from any law firm despite graduating in
the middle of his class from Yale Law School. Law firms assumed he was
enrolled in law school only because of affirmative action, so Thomas
had to struggle to find a job; he ended up getting only one offer in
the Missouri government, thanks to Jack Danforth.
Rich suggests that Thomas's version of events misrepresents the
facts, vivid proof of Thomas's "dubious relationship with the whole
truth and nothing but." Rich writes:
This could be seen most vividly on "60 Minutes," when he revisited
a parable about the evils of affirmative action that is also a
centerpiece of his memoir: his anger about the "tainted" degree he
received from Yale Law School. In Mr. Thomas's account, he stuck a
15-cent price sticker on his diploma after potential employers
refused to hire him. By his reckoning, a Yale Law graduate admitted
through affirmative action, as he was, would automatically be
judged inferior to whites with the same degree. The "60 Minutes"
correspondent, Steve Kroft, maintained that Mr. Thomas had no
choice but to settle for a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974
dollars) in Missouri, working for the state's attorney general,
John Danforth.
What "60 Minutes" didn't say was that the post was substantial � an
assistant attorney general � and that Mr. Danforth was himself a
Yale Law graduate. As Mr. Danforth told the story during the 1991
confirmation hearings and in his own book last year, he traveled to
New Haven to recruit Mr. Thomas when he was still a third-year law
student. That would be before he even received that supposedly
worthless degree. Had it not been for Yale taking a chance on him
in the first place, in other words, Mr. Thomas would never have had
the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start his career
and to ascend to the Supreme Court. Mr. Danforth, a senator in
1991, was the prime mover in shepherding the Thomas nomination to
its successful conclusion.
So is Rich correct that Thomas "worked the Yalie network" to get a
"substantial" job, that of "Assistant Attorney General," the
suggestion being, I gather, that this was the kind of plum position
that perhaps only a Yalie could get?
I don't think so. As I understand it, in Missouri the title
"Assistant Attorney General" is the standard job title given to an
entry-level attorney hired in the state Attorney General's Office.
It's not exactly a common destination for those "work[ing] the Yalie
network"; my googling around suggests that most Assistant Attorneys
General in Missouri are hired straight from Missouri law schools.
Perhaps Rich was misled by the fact that in the federal government,
the job of Assistant Attorney General is indeed quite a job. It's a
Senate-confirmed position, often heading hundreds of attorneys.
But state governments are different. In many states, that lofty
title is given to entry-level lawyers. My sense is that this is the
case in Missouri. If you look at the listings of job openings in that
office, [2]they are all for the position of Assistant Attorney
General.
I did a little googling around to see what kind of resumes and
experience lawyers typically have before being appointed Assistant
Attorney General in Missouri. Here are a few bios of attorneys who
once held the job, with their law school attended and how long after
graduation they were hired: [3]Brundage (Missouri-Columbia, year after
graduation), [4]Rebman (Missouri - Kansas City, right after
graduation), [5]Ottenad (Wash. U., right after passing bar), [6]Miller
(Wash. U., after law school graduation), [7]Glaser (Drake, after 2
years at small firm), [8]Franke (Missouri-KC, right after graduation),
[9]Cosgrove (Notre Dame, apparently after short stint at KC firm),
[10]Richardson (Missouri, right after graduation), [11]Zito
(Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school), [12]Siegel (Wash.
U., right after graduation), [13]Spinden (Missouri-KC, apparently
right after law school).
As best I can tell, these individuals who were hired as Assistant AG
in Missouri did not have "the opportunity to work the Yalie network to
jump-start [their] career[s]." I can find no other Yale graduates who
had this job, and for that matter I haven't been able to find anyone
who attended an "elite" school either at the undergraduate or graduate
level who had it.
To be clear, I think these sorts of jobs are terrific. I think an
entry-level job at a state AG's office is a simply wonderful way to
get real legal experience and serve the public. But Rich's suggestion
that this was some kind of highly sought-after job among the New Haven
set -- and that Thomas never could have had it without affirmative
action, because he could only get that job from Yale -- appears to be
pretty clearly false. And in case you're wondering about Rich's
sarcastic reference to "a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974
dollars)," that salary in 1974 [14]translates after inflation into
about $41,600 a year today. Kind of a weird way to use that Yalie
network, I would think.
Now, it's very possibly true that if Justice Thomas hadn't gone to
Yale, he wouldn't have ended up on the Supreme Court. Only 110 people
have served as Justices on the Supreme Court since the first Justices
were confirmed in 1789, so random chance necessarily plays the
overwhelming role in selecting who gets the job. But Justice Thomas's
"parable" concerns his efforts to get a job as a law school graduate
in 1974, not his non-effort to get elevated from the DC Circuit to the
Supreme Court in 1990. Given that, Rich's argument strikes me as
pretty clearly out of line.
References
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07rich.html
2. http://ago.mo.gov/jobs/lateral.htm
3. http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1026968_1
4.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:0MhQvC4S1_AJ:pview.findlaw.com/view/1579172_1%3Fnoconfirm%3D0+%22missouri+attorney+general%27s+office%22+%22assistant+attorney+general%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&client=firefox-a
5. http://www.mobar.org/wc/may2006/ottenad.htm
6. http://www.obkcg.com/attny_miller.asp
7. http://www.fsqlaw.com/bios.html
8. http://www.fsqlaw.com/bios.html
9. http://www.mobar.org/wc/may2006/ottenad.htm
10.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:vFX-lBv6eXwJ:www.voterichardson.com/index.htm+%22missouri+attorney+general%27s+office%22+%22assistant+attorney+general%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=33&gl=us&client=firefox-a
11. http://www.lathropgage.com/people/detail.aspx?attorney=1747
12. http://www.stuevesiegel.com/ourlawyers.php?cid=0211
13. http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=517
14. http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/data/us/calc/
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