My day in Court. Who do you call when you need to interpret the Constitution? Me
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My next call was to Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to both Joe Biden and Al Gore, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White, edited the Harvard Law Review, was played by Kevin Spacey in the HBO movie Recount and has zero Supreme Court citations. "I am pretty sure that you are the only author who has both been cited by the Supreme Court and made a series of promos for late-night shows on Cinemax," he told me. Perhaps Klain could get himself cited in a case if he stopped spending so much of his time watching Cinemax.
Calling lawyers just to annoy them is tremendously satisfying, but it's even better when the lawyer is my sister. Lisa's coping mechanism upon hearing that I worked on a Supreme Court case was to act unimpressed. "I mean, who even reads a concurring opinion?" she asked. "They're saying the same thing for a slightly different reason." So are we, Lisa. So are we.
Most gratifying, though, was telling my dad, who wanted me to go to law school. But my news only redoubled his efforts. "What about a new profession--college law professor?" he asked. To get him off my back about the law-professor thing, I'm working on getting cited in more cases. There's another Fourth Amendment case--my area of expertise--that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear. Florida v. Jardines is about whether cops can take a drug-sniffing dog to outside someone's door in order to get a warrant. The outcome depends on whether the court sees a dog as a gadget like a thermal imager or as a human who can invade your privacy by smelling private smells. My take is, if you think dog sniffing isn't an invasion of privacy, then you don't have a crotch. And just like that, I'm right behind you, Professor Dorf.