Ginsburg-Scalia fellowship wants to train lawyers to get along

(Reuters) - Programs and scholarships honoring the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have proliferated since her death in 2020, with most channeling support to women and minorities applying to or attending law school.

The latest addition takes a different approach. The New Civil Liberties Alliance’s Ginsburg-Scalia Fellowship is an eight-week dinner lecture series for law students working as summer associates at Washington, D.C. law firms that began in May. It aims to promote civility and collegiality in the legal profession and in intellectual discourse.

The Alliance, founded in 2017, is a nonprofit civil liberties organization that strives to “tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies,” according to its website. It has challenged COVID-19 regulations and the constitutionality of the Security and Exchange Commission’s in-house judges. The group is sometimes described as a libertarian version of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ginsburg and Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, enjoyed a famously warm friendship despite often clashing in their jurisprudence. The new fellowship nodded to the late justices’ shared love of opera by kicking off with a visit to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to see "Carmen" last month.

"We made it clear we were looking for people from across the spectrum, but who were committed to this ideal of civility and intellectual exchange with civility," said Alliance president Mark Chenoweth. Civility between lawyers has been in decline for decades, he said.

Half of the program’s 18 participants, who will receive $1,000 stipend, are Ginsburg fellows and half are Scalia fellows, depending on their political ideology. They are spending their summers at a range of law firms, from conservative boutique Consovoy McCarthy to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, known for its liberal political leanings.

The fellows are due to hear lectures from Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Berkeley law professor John Yoo, among others.

The program will culminate in a public debate between two fellows and two attorneys who argue opposite sides of a key constitutional issue, and “celebrate the nonpartisan nature of basic civil liberties,” the alliance said in an announcement.

Yale law student and fellow Charles Jetty, who is spending his summer at Sidley Austin, said he was drawn to the opportunity to learn more about the Alliance's perspective on administrative law.

"I don’t necessarily share all their views regarding the administrative state, but this is a way to gain exposure to what seems to be an ascendant intellectual school," he said.

At least seven other scholarships honoring Ginsburg have been rolled out since her death. They include When There Are Nine, a nonprofit established in 2021 by women alumni of the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Southern District of New York. It awards $10,000 scholarships and mentoring to women law students. (The name refers to a comment made by Ginsburg when asked when there will be “enough” women on the nation’s high court.)

The New York State Bar Association, Milwaukee Public Schools and the Milwaukee Bar Association, and the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles are among other groups offering scholarships named for Ginsburg.

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