Category: Powell Archives News

In the July 24  NYT‘s, Linda Greenhouse writes about Chief Justice Roberts’ interview with  Fourth Circuit Judge and former Powell Clerk, J. Harvie Wilkinson,  at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference at The Greenbrier.  Wilkinson  elicited a surprising response from Roberts on the desirability of having a Court composed almost entirely of former judges.

Adam Liptak’s story in Sunday’s New York Times about gay Supreme Court clerks extensively treated those from  Justice Powell’s  chambers.  The 1986 Bowers decision was also an important part of the story.

For decades, librarians and archivists have been trying to recast their negative popular images as hair-in-a-bun, sensible shoes shushers  and dust covered people working with dust covered materials respectively.  This week, the popular press had vivid examples of both how the archivist’s image has been recast, and how it has not .

The Tucker family became involved in legal education in Virginia when St. George Tucker became the second law professor at the College of William and Mary in 1790.  (The first, George Wythe, was the first law professor in America.)  His grandson, John Randolph Tucker, was the first dean of the Washington and Lee law school.  His son Henry St. George Tucker, in turn, was the third dean.

It was, therefore, especially gratifying for W&L Law special collections to both recently receive a gift of papers from John Randolph Tucker’s great-great-grandson, Carter Tucker, and to purchase books formerly owned by Henry St. George Tucker’s granddaughter.  The papers are approximately 75 letters, most addressed to John Randolph Tucker from the years 1892-1896.  The books, purchased from a private family library in Lexington, Kentucky, consist of eight volumes published between 1834 and 1893.  All of this is now accessible to researchers in the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Archives.

(Below, letter from John Randolph Tucker to his son Henry St. George Tucker.)

A W&L law student, a Before Sunrise experience, expulsion, Roger Ebert, and a life in London.

Below, Elfield in a 1991 W&L Law Facebook photo.

The Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton, of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, will deliver the Eleventh Annual Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Lecture on February 26.  Sutton clerked for Powell in OT 1991.  The event will begin at 5:00 in the law school’s Millhiser Moot Court Room.

Georgetown Law Weekly has some SCOTUS themed valentines.  Our own Powell Archives website has some personal valentines from the late Justice’s life.

Kudos to 3L and Moot Court Board co-vice chair, Penn Clarke, for researching and creating a great resource on the history of moot courts and other kinds of student trial and advocacy competitions at Washington and Lee.  The archives, in particular, is in his debt.

Pictured below, Burkes Moot Court Competition, 1953.

Last week UVA law Professor Dan Ortiz, clerk in the Powell Chambers OT 1984,  argued for the petitioner in Vance v. Ball State University .  Yesterday Ron Mann, Columbia University professor of law, and Powell clerk in OT 1986, also argued for the petitioner in Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk .

A shout out to 3L Tristan de Vaga who caught the eye of the Roanoke Times “Style Street” blogger.  (This also appeared in this Tuesday’s printed paper.)  

And I make this tribute, even though I am wearing pants with double pleats and cuffs as I write this.