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Academic

: The Faculty Lounge

Senior Theses (and other early scholarship) of the Now Famous

By Alfred Brophy

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Update: Neither of the following count as early scholarship, but ... in honor of her impending nomination to be Supreme Court Justice, a link to Judge Sotomayor's 2004 tribute to John Sexton, which appeared in the NYU Annual Survey of American Law. Also, here is a link to the New York Times website, which has the judge's 2002 speech to the Berkeley law students. It appeared in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. Here's a link to the table of contents of the issue.

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I've been following every now and then talk about senior theses of now famous people. And since we like lists here at the faculty lounge--lists of lateral moves, lists of visitors, all sorts of things that someone might think infringes on privacy, like lists of what we're paid--I thought I'd compile a list of senior theses (or other scholarly work, like law journal notes) of the now famous.

So here we have links to:

Justice Samuel Alito's Princeton Honors Thesis, "An Introduction to the Italian Constitutional Court," and his Yale Law Journal Note.

Secretary Hillary Clinton's Wellseley Honors Thesis, "'There is only one fight': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model."

Governor Jennifer Granholm's co-authored note ("A Nation Less Secure: Diminished Access to Public Information") in the Harvard Civil Rights--Civil Liberties Law Review.

President Barack Obama's Harvard Law Review casenote.

Michelle Robinson Obama's Princeton University's Honors Thesis, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community".

Judge Diane Pamela Wood's note in the Texas Law Review, "Coordinating the EPA, NEPA, and the Clean Water Act."

And while she's less famous than the people above, I find it interesting that Laurie Madig, the (now former) US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, has a couple of articles up on ssrn from back in the days when she taught at Villanova. Ah, the intersection of the academy and high-powered political positions.

I cannot now find Justice Roberts' Harvard thesis, but there are a couple of articles that talk about it and another award-winning undergraduate paper, on Daniel Webster. Nor can I find David Souter's thesis, which was on Holmes' philosophy (perhaps that wasn't as well-plowed in 1961 as it is today.)

I'll keep digging and adding to this. Hey, this is the internet age--there ought to be a lot of good scholarship out there on the now famous! Nominations of other work to link to are always appreciated.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 26, 2009 (boomark / email).