Category:Celebrities with Law Degrees
Amy Coney Barrett finished first in her class at Notre Dame Law School in 1997; Sonia Sotomayor took hers at Yale in 1979; John Roberts, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch all took theirs at Harvard. The Juris Doctor replaced the Bachelor of Laws as the standard American first law degree during the second half of the twentieth century, and in this membership it works less as a licence to practise than as the common entry ticket to American public office. The roster is dominated by the appellate bench, the Justice Department, sitting state attorneys general and big-city mayors, with a separate group who took the degree and never used it in a courtroom.
The bench and the Justice Department
The Supreme Court arrives here through the modern confirmation era. John Roberts earned his degree at Harvard Law School and sits as Chief Justice. Samuel Alito took his at Yale in 1975 and Brett Kavanaugh at Yale as well; Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch took theirs at Harvard; Sonia Sotomayor finished at Yale in 1979; Amy Coney Barrett graduated at the top of her class at Notre Dame, wrote for the Notre Dame Law Review, and clerked for Antonin Scalia. Thurgood Marshall belongs to the older form of the same credential: refused admission to the University of Maryland School of Law because of his race, he enrolled at Howard, studied under Charles Hamilton Houston, and graduated first in his class in 1933.
The Attorney General's office recurs across administrations of both parties. Ramsey Clark and John Ashcroft both trained at the University of Chicago Law School, Alberto Gonzales and Loretta Lynch at Harvard, Eric Holder at Columbia in 1976, and Jeff Sessions at the University of Alabama School of Law in 1973. William Barr and Pam Bondi held the office in later administrations. The prosecutorial layer below it is here too, including Preet Bharara, who took his degree at Columbia before running the Southern District of New York, and Neal Katyal, a Yale graduate who argued Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and later served as Acting Solicitor General.
State attorneys general, governors and city hall
State attorneys general are the densest single occupation in this membership, and they come from a much wider range of law schools than the federal bench does. Letitia James took her degree at Howard and serves in New York; Rob Bonta returned to Yale for law school and serves in California; Ken Paxton took his at the University of Virginia and serves in Texas; Kwame Raoul trained at Chicago-Kent College of Law and serves in Illinois; Kris Mayes returned to Arizona State University for the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law; Andrea Campbell took hers at UCLA; Josh Kaul at Stanford. Dana Nessel, Aaron Frey, Charity Clark, Brenna Bird, Drew Wrigley, Gentner Drummond, Marty Jackley, Steve Marshall, Lynn Fitch, Peter Neronha, Matthew Platkin, Jonathan Skrmetti, Treg Taylor, Kathy Jennings, John Formella and Russell Coleman hold or have held the same office in their own states.
The office is also a step rather than a destination. Josh Stein moved from Attorney General of North Carolina to the governorship, as Patrick Morrisey did in West Virginia, Jeff Landry in Louisiana, Andy Beshear in Kentucky, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Greg Abbott in Texas. Other governors in the category came through legislatures and prosecutors' offices instead: Gretchen Whitmer, Kathy Hochul, JB Pritzker, Michelle Lujan Grisham, Janet Mills, Ron DeSantis, Kelly Armstrong, Spencer Cox, Matt Meyer, Maggie Hassan, Henry McMaster and Josh Shapiro, who took his degree at Georgetown.
City hall is the third layer. Michelle Wu and Sylvester Turner both trained at Harvard Law School before running Boston and Houston; Lori Lightfoot took her degree at the University of Chicago; Mike Duggan took his at Michigan, where he had also taken his bachelor's degree. Keisha Lance Bottoms, Justin Bibb, Quinton Lucas, Randall Woodfin, Shammas Malik, Jacob Frey, Luke Bronin, Marc Morial, Aftab Pureval, Bruce Harrell, Kathy Sheehan, Lovely Warren, Paul Soglin, Dean Trantalis, Sly James, Joe Hogsett, Jorge Elorza, Craig Greenberg, Daniella Levine Cava, Andy Berke and Arunan Arulampalam led cities from Akron to Miami-Dade.
The degree that was never practised
A distinct group took the law degree and built something else with it. Charlie Munger was admitted to Harvard Law School without having completed an undergraduate degree, practised briefly, and spent the rest of his career as vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Jim Koch took a Juris Doctor and an MBA at Harvard, went into management consulting, and then founded the Boston Beer Company. Li Lu completed a bachelor's degree, a law degree and an MBA at Columbia in the same year, 1996, and runs Himalaya Capital.
Technology and finance account for most of the rest. Peter Thiel and Alex Karp both took their degrees at Stanford Law School and later co-founded Palantir Technologies; Katie Haun came out of the same school into federal prosecution and then venture capital; David Sacks took his at the University of Chicago and Keith Rabois at Harvard. Lloyd Blankfein, Ken Chenault, Kenneth Frazier and Paul Singer all trained at Harvard Law School before Goldman Sachs, American Express, Merck and Elliott Investment Management. Robert Rubin took his at Yale, Safra Catz at the University of Pennsylvania, Julie Sweet and Devin Wenig at Columbia, David Zaslav at Boston University School of Law, Brian Moynihan at Notre Dame, David Rubenstein at the University of Chicago, Marc Lasry at New York Law School, Eric Lefkofsky at Michigan, Mitch Lasky at the University of Virginia, and Richard LeFrak and Samuel Robson Walton at Columbia. John W. Snow added the degree at George Washington University to a doctorate in economics before running CSX and the Treasury.
University leadership is a smaller but consistent thread: Michael Schill took his degree at Yale, Liz Magill at the University of Virginia in 1995 and Elizabeth Garrett at the same school, Joan Gabel at the University of Georgia. Each went from legal scholarship to a university presidency rather than to practice.
See also
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