Just read Kagan's 1993 article on Thurgood Marshall, learned much more about Marshall

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Justice Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993)
SCOTUS Nominee Kagan clerked with him from 1987-1988.

I first spoke with Justice Marshall in the summer of 1986, a few months after I had applied to him for a clerkship position... He called me one day and, with little in the way of preliminaries, asked me whether I still wanted a job in his chambers. I responded that I would love a job. "What's that?" he said, "you already have a job?" I tried, in every way I could, to correct his apparent misperception. I yelled, I shouted, I screamed that I did not have a job, that I wanted a job, that I would be honored to work for him. To all of which he responded: "Well, I don't know, if you already have a job. . . ." Finally, he took pity on me, assured me that he had been in jest, and confirmed that I would have a job in his chambers. He asked me, as I recall, only one further question: whether I thought I would enjoy working on dissents...

Whenever we told Justice Marshall that he "had to" do something -- join an opinion, say -- the Justice would look at us coldly and announce: "There are only two things I have to do -- stay black and die." A smarter group of clerks might have learned to avoid this unfortunate grammatical construction...

During the year that marked the bicentennial of the Constitution, Justice Marshall gave a characteristically candid speech. He declared that the Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was "defective"; only over the course of 200 years had the nation "attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for . . . individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today." The Constitution today, the Justice continued, contains a great deal to be proud of. "But the credit does not belong to the Framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in outdated notions of 'liberty,' 'justice,' and 'equality,' and who strived to better them." n7 The credit, in other words, belongs to people like Justice Marshall. As the many thousands who waited on the Supreme Court steps well knew, our modern Constitution is his.

Kagan, Elena. "For Justice Marshall," Texas Law Review, May 1993 (emphasis added).

[Pirate Smile]

1. Linky??

:)

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3. There is no link to it.

But PM me if you want a bit more for educational and non-commercial purposes. :-)

[Oregone]

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