Justice O’Connor has always been someone that I have admired. One of my special interests as president of the Women’s Bar Association in New Hampshire was conducting research and publication on gender diversity demographics and judging. I would like to take Sandra Day O’Connor to lunch to discuss the explicit and implicit biases she encountered throughout her career.
Practicing law in New Hampshire, Justice Souter has always been somewhat of an enigma to me. The immense respect from his peers and stories that I’ve heard about him as a person, how he decided cases and the thought and care that he placed on each case—realizing at the end of the day, whatever decision that is made is going to affect someone’s life—he really embodied the humanity of the law. And I’d like to talk with him about his pragmatic New Hampshire Yankee upbringing, which I think is probably similar to my own.
Justice Breyer at my favorite Boston haunt—since I know he is from Boston— Rami’s falafel restaurant on Harvard Street.
I have always admired his practical yet principled approach. I would ask him what lessons he [would] teach a young lawyer about appellate advocacy.
How does one aggressively advocate on behalf of their client and maintain credibility with the court?
He seems to have the best grasp of some of the public policy and other issues facing applicants for patents, as well as those trying to enforce their rights under the patent laws.
Statistically the court has taken a significantly larger number of patent cases in the past decade than in the past two. It’d be really interesting to know why the court has decided to be a little more active in this area. It really comes down to the court deciding that the parties have made a pretty convincing case that for either public policy or economic reasons the Supreme Court needs to step in. I think Justice Breyer would be able to talk about how that decision process is being made, and why it’s being made.
I’d probably take him to one of our many Vermont farm-to-table restaurants.
Here in Montpelier we have a restaurant called Kismet, which is fantastic.