Clippings: Envisioning a Successful Female Presidential Candidate

Kate Zernicki makes some predictions about who, after Senator Clinton, will be the next serious female contender for the Presidency:

That woman will come from the South, or west of the Mississippi. She will be a Democrat who has won in a red state, or a Republican who has emerged from the private sector to run for governor. She will have executive experience, and have served in a job like attorney general, where she will have proven herself to be “a fighter” (a caring one, of course).

She will be young enough to qualify as postfeminist (in the way Senator Barak Obama has come off as postracial), unencumbered by the battles of the past. She will be married with children, but not young children. She will be emphasizing her experience, and wearing, yes, pantsuits.

Southern Ms. Part III: Networking

This week the female clerks in my building are gathering for our second "Wine on Wednesday." Wednesday was chosen because that's when the male clerks in the building hold practice for their all-male basketball league.

The Permanent Clerk

Working with a law clerk at a federal court as an externship, I became amazed at how much work these permanent clerks actually accomplish. The permanent law clerk and her secretary essentially run the courtroom and chambers, assigning our work, going through the docket and giving the judges his cases, and even briefing him on every case.

Although the law clerks and the secretaries do tend to be women, the law clerks, for the most part, are all practicing attorneys who at one point practiced in the private sector and have a degree of specialization in some area of the law...

Observations of a Judicial Extern

I am spending my summer working for a (female) judge. Since there is not much on the site regarding women in government jobs, I have decided to share some observations I have made over the past few weeks.

From Rural Nicaragua to Corporate America, Women Change Landscapes

My experience as a woman entering the legal profession is perhaps as much about history as it is about the future.

In part, my entrance is shaped by my pre-existing commitment to using the law to advance equality where the nexus of race, gender, disability, and other qualities currently locates inequality, both de facto and de jure. I will start with an example of this commitment, and the view it affords: working in Nicaragua, I would often assess the results of our organization's small grants to feminist projects. One day on such an assignment, equipped with a two-minute brief on the project's circumstances and stated goals, I boarded the bus and set out for the community's presentation on its new patios (household gardens). Before even sitting down for the presentation, it was evident that "successful" was a weak word for what $2,000 had wrought in this 100-person town: the women's voices rang with pride; children ran in and out of the new school building funded partially by profits from the gardens; the landscape's abundant produce bespoke the excellent planning and care with which the project had been executed.

Security screening

I personally experienced the changing face of the U.S. legal profession on Capitol Hill when I attended a hearing held in a Senate office building as a member of the general public. The security detail posted at the entrance treated me like a Senator.