Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Cited Senators

Already in my criminal law textbook (Kadish, Schulhofer, & Steiker, 8th Edition), there have been two citations to articles authored (or co-authored) by sitting US Senators. This is shocking, since I always sort of assumed that when US Senators wrote articles, they never said anything worthwhile. Yet here they are, apparently key elements of the criminal law.

The one I saw today was written by Jon Kyl (R-AZ), along with Steven J. Twist & Stephen Higgins, On the Wings of Their Angels, 9 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 581 (2005) [pg. 1015 in the book]. At this point, Kyl had already been Senator for 10 years.

But the one I spotted yesterday was, if anything, even more amazing. Found on page 13, it was an excerpt from a book review written by one Arlen Specter (R-PA), cited at 76 Yale L.J. 604 (1967). In 1967, Specter was still a mere district attorney in Philadelphia, embarking on a failed run for mayor of that lovely city. He would proceed to lose re-election for his DA position, lose in a Republican primary for Senate, and lose in a Republican primary for Governor, before finally breaking through to the US Senate in 1980, where he has remained ever since.

1 comment:

PG said...

I'm not surprised that senators with law degrees would either have published a decent article while they were young (Specter) or written a highly cite-able statement about the justification for a bill they're sponsoring in Congress (Kyl). Kyl was editor of the Arizona L. Rev., and Specter graduated from Yale Law.

I will be surprised if you find a non-legally-trained Senator in your book, though.