Will a failed bar exam also be a bar to the Supreme Court?
posted at 3:41 pm on May 12, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Among the people on the short list to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court is Kathleen Sullivan, currently a professor of law at Stanford University. Sullivan would fill two demographic check boxes for Barack Obama; Sullivan would add a second female to the highest court, and would also make a historic entry as the first openly gay Supreme Court justice. Sullivan could make another kind of history, too, as the Hill points out:
If Stanford Law professor Kathleen Sullivan is nominated to the Supreme Court, she’ll likely have to answer at least one embarrassing question during her confirmation hearing: How did she fail the California bar exam?
Sullivan, who’s rumored to be on Obama’s SCOTUS short list, failed the test just four years ago while serving as a professor at Stanford Law School.
If Sullivan got a slot at Stanford Law, she’s certainly bright and capable enough, and the California exam is notoriously tough. However, that poses another question: did Sullivan slough off her preparation? She told the LA Times that she cracked the books hard on her second attempt, but that begs the question of whether she took it seriously the first time.
Obama will likely select Sonia Sotomayor anyway, as he will want to pick the first Hispanic justice (although some say Benjamin Cardozo, with his Portuguese ancestry, qualified already). If he picks Sullivan instead, or later, expect this to be a topic that will come under scrutiny, especially given the critical barbs aimed at some of George Bush’s appointments to the appellate bench. If Sullivan didn’t take the bar exam seriously when her livelihood depended on it, doesn’t that reflect a casualness and procrastination that doesn’t recommend one for the highest court?
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Passing the Bar really only comes down to one thing. The same thing that law school comes down to -
How much can the human mind endure, when it comes to the depths of the study and the lecture of sheer boredom?
Law school is 3 years of the most revolting type of study. It is the boredom of contracts, property, administrative law, et al. It is the boredom of boring professors who bore you with boring lectures about boring subjects.
It is the study of boredom.
Had I to do it over, I wouldn’t have gone to law school. Which would’ve made having to study for the bar, moot.
OhEssYouCowboys on May 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM
And my kids absolutely enjoyed it…I think the saying is, the first year they scare you to death, second year work you to death, third year bore you to death.
It was mandatory for 60% of the kids the first year to fail…no matter what grade, no matter how smart, 60% were going to fail. So every day they counted how many did not show up, how many have left.
That was the only real strain, knowing you were good enough, but if everyone stayed in, you could be cut. Inversely, you could be average in a year with a lot of drop outs, and you could make it to year number two fairly easy…but then they were worked to death the second year.
right2bright on May 12, 2009 at 5:37 PM
Yup, that’s right. But, I had a saying. When I was contemplating the horrors of boredom, I kept telling myself: If I can get in, I can get out. If I can get out, I can pass the Bar.
I just kept reciting that, while a Professor, with dust all over him, bored us about the Rule Against Perpetuities.
:O(
OhEssYouCowboys on May 12, 2009 at 5:41 PM
Amen, brother. There’s nothing like law school to kill the love of learning.
patriette on May 12, 2009 at 5:42 PM
The CA bar was a three day water boarding, but I passed on my first attempt. Where is my professorship at Stanford and SCOTUS nomination?
tommylotto on May 12, 2009 at 5:51 PM
Actually, if you go to the right school with the right teachers. it can be fascinating. Torts with the Socratic method, and Con Law with Lino Graglia, Good Times!!!
tommylotto on May 12, 2009 at 5:54 PM
I must have forgotten this story when it came out a few years ago. Though I had a less than pleasant encounter with the woman in my only encounter with her, I will be magnanimous and decline the opportuntity to say, “SWWEEEET!” Because that would be wrong.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) on May 12, 2009 at 6:03 PM
Everyone I know who took a Bar Review class was pissed as Hell. If they didn’t know it already, that’s where they found out what a gigantic waste of time and money law school classes were. And what bothered them the most was that some of the SAME professors who intentionally screwed with their heads for 3 years got down to brass tacks and went over everything they needed to know in few weeks. (Personally, I skipped the review course entirely, bought some used books, spent a spent a week reading them and passed with flying colors.)
But no one in his right mind expects civil servants to be of above-average intelligence, let alone be hard workers by any stretch of the imagination.
What’s really bothersome about this is the mindless arrogance it entails. As a professor, she should have known better than anyone what a cluster f*ck law school is and how completely irrelevant her academic background was to actually being proficient in the black letter rule of law.
She’s not just dumb. And she’s not just lazy. Either of those would be perfectly acceptable in a Supreme Court Justice. She is hopelessly clueless. And that is much, much worse.
At the risk of abusing what will soon become the most over-used phrase in America: That is something this country can’t afford right now.
logis on May 12, 2009 at 6:04 PM
So much for picking ‘the most qualified’. Democrats are only interested in labels. MLK’s spinning in his grave.
GarandFan on May 12, 2009 at 6:06 PM
Where did you go to law school?
American law school professors do not give lectures. The professors use the Socratic method and engage in dialogue with the students.
slp on May 12, 2009 at 6:13 PM
I 100% disagree with that.
JeffinSac on May 12, 2009 at 6:19 PM
I would add that this is the exact same reasoning (having been at Harvard Law and Precedent of the Law Review) that led some blogger at this site to declare that the idiot messiah “has brains to spare for the job”. Of course, we all found out that the idiot messiah is, indeed, an idiot incapable of understanding even 8th grade math – and that is no exagerration, as his “profit and earnings ratios” comment demonstrated so clearly.
Anyone who puts stock in the judgment of these law schools is a fool – especially as we have the dumbest person in history occupying the White House right now.
progressoverpeace on May 12, 2009 at 6:24 PM
Socratic method? The next time any of you get on an airplane you can thank whatever god you worship that engneering isn’t taught by the Socratic method.
If the Socratic method sounds like bullshit it’s because it is.
Pelayo on May 12, 2009 at 6:31 PM
Is that Data?
Lonetown on May 12, 2009 at 6:39 PM
Or, as a Gay Female Lawyer, was she an affirmative action PC type of hire?
We are talking about a California College after all.
Romeo13 on May 12, 2009 at 6:43 PM
Sorry, but passing the bar takes you out of the running with this administration…
After all, the law is what THEY say it is… actualy knowing the law would hamper your ability to toe the “Progresive” line.
Romeo13 on May 12, 2009 at 6:46 PM
Believe it or not, I actually had one teacher in my life who used the Socratic Method PROPERLY. It was my high school calculous teacher. It’s really just the analytical thought process – a way to apply Boolean mathematics to discussion of every subject imaginable.
And trust me, that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what is taught in American law schools today.
When you teach someone how to think, you teach someone how to think – period. But when you claim to “teach someone how to think” about any particular SUBJECT, whether that’s environmentalism, politics or – Heaven forbid – law, then what you are doing is essentially the opposite of encouraging free thought.
What law school professors do is indoctrination, pure and simple.
logis on May 12, 2009 at 6:46 PM
I can’t imagine someone doing it twice…and I think the odds of passing the second time is very slim.
What did Kennedy do? Three or four times, and that wasn’t even the Calif. bar.
right2bright on May 12, 2009 at 7:01 PM
You know, that wouldn’t even be so bad if they did proper indoctrination, but they can’t even get that right. Just the idea that the dean of Yale Law was a global government internationalist (an intellectually indefensible position) made fire jump out of my eyes.
progressoverpeace on May 12, 2009 at 7:09 PM
From the Hill piece:
Full disclosure: I’m not a troll. I voted reluctantly for McCain because I loathe Obama. That said, c’mon, Ed. Provide a little more fricking detail in your summary. This nitwit had passed the NY and MA bar exams before failing the CA bar exam. I’ve heard the NY bar exam is pretty difficult. I’ve passed three myself (first try each time), though none supposedly as difficult as NY or CA. All the same, there’s a big difference between flunking your only bar exam on the first try and flunking a state bar exam on the first try after passing the exams in two other states.
I still fault her, but in the end she’s one thing and one alone–a gay pick. And this will be a mistake for Obama because he really ought to find a liberal with impeccable credentials and an intellect to match Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas. Instead, she’ll go down in history as the muffdiver pick who couldn’t pass the CA bar exam.
BuckeyeSam on May 12, 2009 at 7:51 PM
I wouldn’t fault her for this. If you are unfamiliar with the exam it is basically one big memorization test. Imagine having 12-20 finals over the course of 2-3 days. It hasn’t really been a test of one’s ability to be a lawyer, but more of a control on the number of lawyers out there.
On the multiple choice, multi state section, one is forced to choose the more correct answer on many of the selections. In a profession that thrives on argument, I find that peculiar.
Chubbs65 on May 12, 2009 at 8:40 PM
Surely he wouldn’t be that stupid.
AnninCA on May 12, 2009 at 9:02 PM
I guess I miss the point of this post Ed. She passed the bar on her 2nd try right? Judges are lawyers right? So she is qualified, correct? What difference does it make if it took her one try or 20? In fact, if it did take her twenty, the odds were that she would probably have a far more encyclopedic knowledge of the law, would it not? The only argument one could make about her not passing the first time, was that she just wasnt smart enough, that sounds far to much like a whiney-assed liberal comment to me.
paulsur on May 12, 2009 at 10:54 PM
Unbelievable. Not one “qualifier” listed in that post above has anything to do with “astounding legal mind”.
I wish it were some sort of parody.
amkun on May 12, 2009 at 11:33 PM
I don’t believe failing the bar exam the first time for lack of anything is warrant enough to ban one from attaining a SCOTUS posting. After all much less qualified people who’ve failed many things, not once, but times over, have been placed on the SCOTUS.
On another note, Sullivan also fits another demographic category, that being, the “from California (a.k.a. the West) category. At least by Professorship.
PresidenToor on May 13, 2009 at 1:45 AM
Why pick her? Her defiant preferences do not contribute value.
Sebilious on HHS is an idot regarding health education
Napolitano in DHS is 1 french fry short of being a happy meal.
Panetta? come on. Obama picks dweebs and low achievers.
I see Preez Hilton as a candidate to run a bank or the company that builds Dodge Rahms.
seven on May 13, 2009 at 10:08 AM
Clearly some education about the California bar exam is needed here.
The California bar exam is indeed the toughest in the country; the California state bar even says that itself. They are very open about the fact they don’t want new lawyers practicing in California, so the essay and performance tests are usually designed to trick you (the Multistate is well-known for that) and so it does not necesarily reflect the practice of law (for instance, the practice of law usually does not require drafting an answer in minutes as the bar exam does; a laywer always has research materials available to them, while you don’t have that on any bar exam that I am aware of). Passage rates for the California bar exam are routinely among the lowest and often THE lowest in the nation — usually less than 50% and the past few times less than 40%. So it’s actually quite normal to fail it on the first try. Many consider the first try a “dry run,” albeit a very expensive one.
It is especially difficult to pass if you are a practicing lawyer from out-of-state. California law is quirky, out-of-state lawyers often have no opportunity for a California bar review, the performance tests (for which you can’t study) are very complicated and involved, and the writing style they require for the essays is very different from bar exams in the rest of the country.
The fact of the matter is that at least half the lawyers admitted in California in the past decade or two have failed the California bar exam at least once.
So, you might want to get off your high horse on this one. I don’t agree with this woman’s politics by any means, but lawyers will not typically consider failure of the California bar on the first try a black mark.
Pro Cynic on May 13, 2009 at 10:16 AM
I passed the Cal bar the first time, not because I am particularly smart, but because I studied hard. Everyone I know who studied hard, passed. Sullivan worked at my husband’s firm (not an appellate firm, a trial firm) and was regarded as very, very smart, but simply didn’t spend enough time studying (a common problem with practicing lawyers).
Villaroigosa, on the other hand, failed some 13 times, which among a host of other reasons, proves that he is a moron.
LASue on May 13, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Just had to see this gem again.
Wow.
cs89 on May 13, 2009 at 4:10 PM
I’ve taken many exams far more difficult than the Calif bar, so my horse is just fine. Lawyers might not consider this a failure, but I don’t have much respect for lawyers’ opinions, in general. I’ve seen too many of their arguments and too many legal decisions to think that lawyers have anything but a passing familiarity with logic – and many lawyers don’t seem to have any familiarity with it, at all.
I am one who thinks that the SCOTUS should be comprised of the best of the best. Whether 60% fail the CA bar on the first try doesn’t interest me, since that group clearly does not represent the best, and most certainly not the best of the best.
I’m glad that many of the lawyers are around here arguing for the difficulty of the bar exams (or CA’s, at least) but you all need to remember that that judgment is yours only and not shared by many outside of your little profession – many of us who have had to take far more difficult tests over our careers.
progressoverpeace on May 13, 2009 at 4:21 PM
Actually, the Patent Bar is pretty darned tough. But, since no one with a liberal arts degree can even touch it, you don’t hear much bellyaching.
The law is absolutely nothing but codified common sense. There is no legal concept that I cannot explain to a layman in a very few minutes.
But it could take literally YEARS to explain a technical concept to someone who doesn’t understand the underlying science and mathematics. And that’s assuming he’s even capable of learning it at all – by no means a given for someone who considers himself a “fully educated” member of modern society simply because he has read a few books.
logis on May 13, 2009 at 11:49 PM
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