Frank Rich, Clarence Thomas, and the Missouri Assistant Attorney General:
In today's New York Times, Frank Rich has a rather nasty essay that purports to catch Justice Thomas misrepresenting his past. The specific example is Justice Thomas's first job out of law school in the Missouri Attorney General's Office. As Justice Thomas tells the story, he couldn't get a job from any law firm despite graduating in the middle of his class from Yale Law School. Law firms assumed he was enrolled in law school only because of affirmative action, so Thomas had to struggle to find a job; he ended up getting only one offer in the Missouri government, thanks to Jack Danforth.
Rich suggests that Thomas's version of events misrepresents the facts, vivid proof of Thomas's "dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but." Rich writes:
I don't think so. As I understand it, in Missouri the title "Assistant Attorney General" is the standard job title given to an entry-level attorney hired in the state Attorney General's Office. It's not exactly a common destination for those "work[ing] the Yalie network"; my googling around suggests that most Assistant Attorneys General in Missouri are hired straight from Missouri law schools.
Perhaps Rich was misled by the fact that in the federal government, the job of Assistant Attorney General is indeed quite a job. It's a Senate-confirmed position, often heading hundreds of attorneys.
But state governments are different. In many states, that lofty title is given to entry-level lawyers. My sense is that this is the case in Missouri. If you look at the listings of job openings in that office, they are all for the position of Assistant Attorney General.
I did a little googling around to see what kind of resumes and experience lawyers typically have before being appointed Assistant Attorney General in Missouri. Here are a few bios of attorneys who once held the job, with their law school attended and how long after graduation they were hired: Brundage (Missouri-Columbia, year after graduation), Rebman (Missouri - Kansas City, right after graduation), Ottenad (Wash. U., right after passing bar), Miller (Wash. U., after law school graduation), Glaser (Drake, after 2 years at small firm), Franke (Missouri-KC, right after graduation), Cosgrove (Notre Dame, apparently after short stint at KC firm), Richardson (Missouri, right after graduation), Zito (Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school), Siegel (Wash. U., right after graduation), Spinden (Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school).
As best I can tell, these individuals who were hired as Assistant AG in Missouri did not have "the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start [their] career[s]." I can find no other Yale graduates who had this job, and for that matter I haven't been able to find anyone who attended an "elite" school either at the undergraduate or graduate level who had it.
To be clear, I think these sorts of jobs are terrific. I think an entry-level job at a state AG's office is a simply wonderful way to get real legal experience and serve the public. But Rich's suggestion that this was some kind of highly sought-after job among the New Haven set -- and that Thomas never could have had it without affirmative action, because he could only get that job from Yale -- appears to be pretty clearly false. And in case you're wondering about Rich's sarcastic reference to "a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974 dollars)," that salary in 1974 translates after inflation into about $41,600 a year today. Kind of a weird way to use that Yalie network, I would think.
Now, it's very possibly true that if Justice Thomas hadn't gone to Yale, he wouldn't have ended up on the Supreme Court. Only 110 people have served as Justices on the Supreme Court since the first Justices were confirmed in 1789, so random chance necessarily plays the overwhelming role in selecting who gets the job. But Justice Thomas's "parable" concerns his efforts to get a job as a law school graduate in 1974, not his non-effort to get elevated from the DC Circuit to the Supreme Court in 1990. Given that, Rich's argument strikes me as pretty clearly out of line.
Rich suggests that Thomas's version of events misrepresents the facts, vivid proof of Thomas's "dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but." Rich writes:
This could be seen most vividly on "60 Minutes," when he revisited a parable about the evils of affirmative action that is also a centerpiece of his memoir: his anger about the "tainted" degree he received from Yale Law School. In Mr. Thomas's account, he stuck a 15-cent price sticker on his diploma after potential employers refused to hire him. By his reckoning, a Yale Law graduate admitted through affirmative action, as he was, would automatically be judged inferior to whites with the same degree. The "60 Minutes" correspondent, Steve Kroft, maintained that Mr. Thomas had no choice but to settle for a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974 dollars) in Missouri, working for the state's attorney general, John Danforth.So is Rich correct that Thomas "worked the Yalie network" to get a "substantial" job, that of "Assistant Attorney General," the suggestion being, I gather, that this was the kind of plum position that perhaps only a Yalie could get?
What "60 Minutes" didn't say was that the post was substantial — an assistant attorney general — and that Mr. Danforth was himself a Yale Law graduate. As Mr. Danforth told the story during the 1991 confirmation hearings and in his own book last year, he traveled to New Haven to recruit Mr. Thomas when he was still a third-year law student. That would be before he even received that supposedly worthless degree. Had it not been for Yale taking a chance on him in the first place, in other words, Mr. Thomas would never have had the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start his career and to ascend to the Supreme Court. Mr. Danforth, a senator in 1991, was the prime mover in shepherding the Thomas nomination to its successful conclusion.
I don't think so. As I understand it, in Missouri the title "Assistant Attorney General" is the standard job title given to an entry-level attorney hired in the state Attorney General's Office. It's not exactly a common destination for those "work[ing] the Yalie network"; my googling around suggests that most Assistant Attorneys General in Missouri are hired straight from Missouri law schools.
Perhaps Rich was misled by the fact that in the federal government, the job of Assistant Attorney General is indeed quite a job. It's a Senate-confirmed position, often heading hundreds of attorneys.
But state governments are different. In many states, that lofty title is given to entry-level lawyers. My sense is that this is the case in Missouri. If you look at the listings of job openings in that office, they are all for the position of Assistant Attorney General.
I did a little googling around to see what kind of resumes and experience lawyers typically have before being appointed Assistant Attorney General in Missouri. Here are a few bios of attorneys who once held the job, with their law school attended and how long after graduation they were hired: Brundage (Missouri-Columbia, year after graduation), Rebman (Missouri - Kansas City, right after graduation), Ottenad (Wash. U., right after passing bar), Miller (Wash. U., after law school graduation), Glaser (Drake, after 2 years at small firm), Franke (Missouri-KC, right after graduation), Cosgrove (Notre Dame, apparently after short stint at KC firm), Richardson (Missouri, right after graduation), Zito (Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school), Siegel (Wash. U., right after graduation), Spinden (Missouri-KC, apparently right after law school).
As best I can tell, these individuals who were hired as Assistant AG in Missouri did not have "the opportunity to work the Yalie network to jump-start [their] career[s]." I can find no other Yale graduates who had this job, and for that matter I haven't been able to find anyone who attended an "elite" school either at the undergraduate or graduate level who had it.
To be clear, I think these sorts of jobs are terrific. I think an entry-level job at a state AG's office is a simply wonderful way to get real legal experience and serve the public. But Rich's suggestion that this was some kind of highly sought-after job among the New Haven set -- and that Thomas never could have had it without affirmative action, because he could only get that job from Yale -- appears to be pretty clearly false. And in case you're wondering about Rich's sarcastic reference to "a measly $10,000-a-year job (in 1974 dollars)," that salary in 1974 translates after inflation into about $41,600 a year today. Kind of a weird way to use that Yalie network, I would think.
Now, it's very possibly true that if Justice Thomas hadn't gone to Yale, he wouldn't have ended up on the Supreme Court. Only 110 people have served as Justices on the Supreme Court since the first Justices were confirmed in 1789, so random chance necessarily plays the overwhelming role in selecting who gets the job. But Justice Thomas's "parable" concerns his efforts to get a job as a law school graduate in 1974, not his non-effort to get elevated from the DC Circuit to the Supreme Court in 1990. Given that, Rich's argument strikes me as pretty clearly out of line.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Clarence Thomas, Yale Law School, and Affirmative Action:
- Did Justice Thomas Know He Was Admitted to Yale Because of His Race:
- Frank Rich, Clarence Thomas, and the Missouri Assistant Attorney General:
Thomas might have gotten on the Court if he'd gone to Harvard or Stanford instead of Yale, but if he'd wound up at a merely top-10 school—or, God forbid, a fourth-tier dump like Georgetown or UCLA—there's no way he'd have been appointed.
Additionally, Rich talks about the "Yalie network" in part to emphasize how it was this connection to Danforth that helped enable his later nomination to the Court. Even though Rich didn't lay it out explicitly, the idea is that a different person would quite possibly look back at this series of events and think, "man, that first job I had was a major letdown at the time, but it's a good thing it worked out that way given that I likely wouldn't be where I am now without it." I agree Rich erred in characterizing the Missouri AAG position as highly-regarded, but it's still fair to point out that Thomas's view of all this is strange.
I also agree with the thrust of the article: Thomas’s comparison of what happened to him to a lynching is offensive. I also think Orin’s calculation of a 41k salary is a bit misleading. That amount of money is not insubstantial in Missouri. It’s the equivalent to 90k in New York. Also keep in mind that in 1974, law firms were not exactly paying the big bucks to their associates. I suspect, although I don’t have the numbers, that associates in New York were not making that much more than the equivalent of 90k in 1974 (21k).
Finally, to those who think that affirmative action admits less “qualified” people: since Thomas admitted he was admitted to Yale because of affirmative action, if law firms decided to not hire him because he was less qualified, weren’t they right to make that decision? Or did the fact that he graduated in the middle of his class make up for that fact?
Finally, while it is obviously not easy to graduated in the middle of the class at Yale, did anybody else find it shocking that a Supreme Court Justice -- you, supposedly the best of the best of the best -- didn’t graduated at the top of his class?
I also don’t understand his decision to become more conservative because of AA. Isn’t it more likely that conservatives, who generally speaking oppose affirmative action, were the ones who thought he wasn’t qualified, rather than liberals, who are in favor of affirmative action?
I also agree with the thrust of the article: Thomas’s comparison of what happened to him to a lynching is offensive.
Finally, to the conservatives who think that affirmative action admits less “qualified” people: since Thomas admitted he was admitted to Yale because of affirmative action, if law firms decided to not hire him because he was less qualified, weren’t they right to make that decision? Or did the fact that he graduated in the middle of his class make up for that fact?
Finally, while it is obviously not easy to graduated in the middle of the class at Yale, did anybody else find it shocking that a Supreme Court Justice -- you, supposedly the best of the best of the best -- didn’t graduated at the top of his class?
I look at it this way. There are SC Justices who did much better in school who don't strike me as a good judges. Maybe they know a lot, but they aren't good judges.
Yes, it is. And especially after investing in a Yale Law School degree. Many community college graduates in Missouri make better than $40,000. And most folks with a bachelor's degree do.
See the map
Around Columbia/Jefferson City (where an assistant state attorney general might live and work), 40,000 is barely the median.
I blame our education system for someone like Rich having a platform for such rantings to be taken seriously.
``Proved plain fools at last,'' as Pope ends the saga of the theater critic.
Do you really believe that the grading system at law schools (or any other schools) efficiently sorts people by ability to do a given job? Is it possible, too, that as people mature theyperform better-- or worse-- than grades predeict because of changes in motivation? Justice Robert Jackson, certainly a star,
never attended college. At age 18, he went to work as an apprentice in a Jamestown law office, then attended Albany Law School, in Albany, New York, where he completed one year of the two-year program. During the summer of 1912, Jackson returned to Jamestown and apprenticed for the next year.
(Quote from Wikipedia)
Hugo Black and Earl Warren both attended state law schools and worked themselves up politically before their appointments. The point is that the current situation where all justices attended top 5 law schools probably is not due to the unique ability of these schools to educate people to interpret the law. Tather, it is due the current difficulty in mustering a consensus for confirmation, requiring that the formal qualifications of the candidates be as prestigious as possible.
First, since I work for a state Attorney General, I have noticed that my counterparts in other states have different titles. Some are called "Deputy Attorney General;" others are called "Assistant Attorney General," all doing the same job. In my office the Assistant Attorney General is the #2 in the office (after the Attorney General). One state over, like Missouri, the bulk of the attorneys are called Assistant Attorney General, as is apparently the case with Missouri.
Second, as those who have gone through the law school recruiting process know, the key recruiting occurs during the second year. Many students tben have had summer clerkships between their second and third year, and spend the third year knowing they have a job upon graduation. Clarence Thomas was not in that position--and may have felt bitter that despite attending YLS, Missouri AG Jack Danforth was the only one to recruit him, and that was as a 3L.
I don't see how anyone could see this as an inconsistency in Thomas's story. It is quite common for people to receive a job offer very early in the process from their lowest ranked, "safety net" option. If that offer turns out the be their, it is not uncommon to be very disappointed.
If the answer is negative then the sad fact is that Justice Thomas was probably spurned because he was black and/or he simply was not very impressive.
My own recollection is that big firms and companies were scrambling very hard for qualified blacks in the mid-1970s, even if just for show. Of course I may be a few years early and that might make a huge difference. And bear in mind that white shoe firms were bastions of bigotry until very recently and for example didn't start hiring Jews until the late 70s, so far as I understand.
One look at any big firm's stat sheet on NALP will confirm two things: (1) their commitment to "diversity" is complete tokenism given the absurd disparity between minority hires and whites, and (2) the token minority hires that these firms do make often end up being, on average, students who are more qualified than the majority of the white students that these firms hire. Put the two together and a very cogent argument can be made for law firms taking affirmative action into account in evaluating what they deem the "qualifications" of minority students. After all, if these firms weren't doing so, you'd think they would be hiring minority students who went to the same types of schools as their white hires, especially given that there should be so much demand for minority students if those who allege that these firms are all about "diversity" are right.
I still think these white shoe firms are bastions of bigotry, and I think Thomas's point went to that. You can't retrain a bigot by instituting affirmative action; the bigot will merely pile affirmative action on top of his reasons to discriminate against someone. American "biglaw" is a classic example of that.
The issue isn't whether Thomas would have been better off had he not been admitted to Yale on affirmative action, but whether Thomas would have been better off admitted to Yale on AA or admitted to a lesser law school without AA. Could he have snagged that law firm job he so coveted coming from a second tier law school instead of Yale? Doubtful. AA might've reduced the value of his Yale degree, but his Yale degree was still more valuable than a lesser law school's degree. AA gave Thomas an absolute advantage, not just a relative one. At LEAST his Yale degree is worth 15 cents, instead of nothing.
For Thomas, snagging that law firm job would have confirmed the value of his Yale degree. Had AA kept working for him, at law firm hiring, at partnership, he would have been quite content to move up each rung of the AA ladder. It's only when AA is pulled away from him that he wants to dismantle the whole edifice that got him where he now sits.
Poor Thomas, forced to apply to Yale, forced to attend, forced to graduate and not transfer, forced to put Yale on his resume, forced to keep his diploma framed and kept in his home, forced to hire Yale law clerks (minorities no less!), forced to write about Yale in his autobiography.
Curse the day Yale admitted him.
BTW, I find KT Cat's "nongratuitous snark" amusing. I assume the phrase means he expects valuable consideration for his contribution? (I'm asking this seriously, and not just as gratuitous snark.)
Now, I don't know but it would be easy to check how other law school blacks did at the time. But blaming not being hired on "affirmative action" is really no different from blaming it on "racism." It reflects a potential failure to take responsibility for one's own shortcomings. Maybe he was a lousy interview. It seems strange to say that people should take personal responsibility and then whine about how others are to blame for your difficulties.
Let us say for the sake of argument Thomas is not the brightest bulb on the block. He does know one important thing The Constitution and he has one important characteristic: to apply it as written (according to his understanding) to Every Case.
I commend you to Raich and Thomas' opinion. Clear, brilliant, and so easy to understand that the man in the street could apply it to the next similar case. Or Kelo.
I like his attitude: to apply the law and make decisions so the man in the street could understand them. The smart can do really complex things. The brilliant can do complex things simply.
Justice Thomas - brilliant.
I think it isn't too much of a stretch to say that once Thomas distinguished himself as a good lawyer (which appears to have taken nearly a decade of hard work), having Yale on his resume helped him land his EEOC job, which seems to have paved the way for him to eventually become a supreme court justice.
Applying that logic to its fullest extent, that argument is saying that creating a "second tier" admissions system (consisting of lesser standards as affirmative action often is) for blacks is perfectly acceptable, because they "at least" got into Yale instead of going through the same admissions standards as everyone else and ending up at some place "worth less" than Yale. Who cares if we risk creating a stigma against blacks who are admitted to Yale by having weaker admissions standards for them? AT LEAST they got into Yale!
That logic can be used to justify any form of racial discrimination. Why not use that logic back in the days of Plessy v. Ferguson - hey, we throw blacks in the back of the train, but at least they're ON the train! Or how about we tell Rosa Parks the same thing - you have to sit in the back of the bus, but at least you got ON the bus in the first place! You know what the common thread is in both of the aforementioned hypotheticals and Clarence Thomas's argument? That because of the given person's black/minority status, the opportunity that they were supposedly given on an "equal" or "separate but equal" footing was CLEARLY LESS than the opportunity that whites in the same position received.
Thomas's point was that he went to Yale, and assuming that affirmative action was "beneficial" to minorities who got into Yale, he should have had the same opportunities (or even better ones because many of you pro-AA people insist that firms love hiring minority candidates) as the white students at that institution. Yet Thomas didn't. He didn't have the option to go to New York or DC firms. He couldn't even make it to a big market and wound up with a government job in Missouri.
He is not the only minority who has had this experience. Affirmative action may create good feelings of kumbaya and what not inside its proponents, but the reality of its effects is much more harsh than you guys are willing to acknowledge.
I agree with this and I thought that his Raich dissent was an outstanding opinion. IMO, he was the only person who got the case right.
Regarding my point that Thomas failed to distinguish himself at Yale. Because of DB’s point, I concede that I was wrong.
One additional point. I think Thomas’s argument in opposition to affirmative action (using his own case as a supposed example) is poor and makes little sense. The argument, as I understand it, goes like this: If we have affirmative action, then people will think that blacks who succeed got it because of affirmative action and not because of merit. Thus, whatever success they achieve will be dismissed as not merit based. But the reason some people think affirmative action allows in people without merit into school is because of conservative framing of the issue (and thanks to some poorly devised affirmative action programs.) As a liberal, I think race could be used as a proxy for diversity of experience and be used in determining who to admit in a large pool of candidates with otherwise similar resumes. Liberals, obviously, have lost that framing debate for the most part. But it seems odd to say because conservatives have won the framing debate, you should abandon the substantive policy -- as opposed to trying to retake the framing debate. It would be like saying because conservatives successfully framed opposing the war in Iraq as being unpatriotic and opposing the troops, we should go ahead and support the war and Iraq instead of trying to properly reframe the issue.
Huh? Could you, perhaps, name a single one of those 110 people who was primarily selected for the position of Supreme Court Justice based upon a random draw? That there are other factors in play other than merit or suitability for the job doesn't mean anything like that Justices are chosen by random chance.
Liberals are incapable of seeing him as anything but a "black man" who obviously needed AA to get to where he is because in the liberal mind a black man is too weak to do it on his on and needs liberal whitey's help.
Yeah, I'm another African-American man who has had it with the Democrats and the liberals telling me I can't do anything without their help.
Biglaw is not bigoted; the people there hate everyone equally. On second thought, they hate themselves most of all. Why else would they choose to live that way?
Awful life. Simply awful.
Furthermore, even assuming that affirmative action created some kind of rational discounting, that could not plausibly justify treating his degree as worse than that of a white top-20 student. There is no evidence that white top-20 students had anything remotely like Thomas's difficulty getting a prestigious, well-paying job in a large market. And Thomas was somewhere in the middle of the class at Yale, which should have significantly mitigated any discounting of his degree on the grounds that he wasn't as good as other Yale students.
Whatever effect "rationally" discounting Thomas's degree due to affirmative action had, it is very implausible that it was at all significant due to the effects of the racism of the era. Maybe Thomas was also lousy at interviewing or something, but it's hard to believe racism wasn't a large factor in the difficulty he had landing a good job.
True. I was only commenting on black students because the issue is whether Thomas’s experiences are representative of how affirmative action affects black students at Yale.
The only thing the cost of living comparision proves is how expensive NYC is. Prosecutors in fly-over country often start at over $50,000. I attend a fourth tier law school and know fellow students who have offers for over $210,000 in NYC cost of living adjusted dollars.
Straw man. The reason some people think affirmative action allows minorities with less "merit" (i.e., weaker grades and scores) into school is because it is demonstrably true.
However, this situation might only compound the damage that the AA system can inflict on the self confidence of minority individuals. It surely complicates the efforts of their colleagues in the workplace to judge them fairly.
This is the loudest complaint of Thomas and of the other minority individuals who oppose AA as now practiced, in which individuals are pushed one rung up the ladder solely on grounds of race or other accidents of birth.
One might acknowledge the point and still support AA on balance, but anyone who honestly wants to improve race relations must confront this issue.
It is hard for me to believe that those who publicly attack Thomas for raising this simple and important point genuinely care about real live people--black, white, or otherwise. They should stop waving their flags and sit down to a quiet, honest talk with a cross section of American students and workers of good will.
AA lets in less qualified people based on skin color (Many of whom, it must be noted, flunk out and never receive any degree). That is fact, not framing.
But conservatives have not as a rule framed opposition to the war as lack of patriotism. This is just another left-wing urban legend. On the other hand, there are many examples of prominent liberals/Democrats questioning the patriotism of conservatives/Republicans. It's called projection.
I thought Thomas' claim was that, because of AA, he could get no job after law school (and that his YLS diploma was, therefore, only worth fifteen cents), not that he couldn't get a sufficiently prestigious job.
And yet he was hired by a white Republican in Missouri, after facing rejection from all the limousine liberals in NYC.
But this is all irrelevant to Thomas’s stigma argument. He is not arguing that blacks are in fact less qualified -- indeed, he (rightly) assumes he was qualified to be at Yale despite being there because of AA. Instead, Thomas’s argument is that blacks are viewed as less qualified (regardless of the truth of that assertion) and so we should not have affirmative action because it hurts black people. So arguing whether or not the framing is correct is not relevant to Thomas’s point. Don’t confuse why you oppose affirmative action with Thomas’s argument.
I must admit that I have not read the book or seen Thomas tell the story in an interview. However, I would point out that even Rich does not characterize Thomas's statements that way.
Rich's point, and this weak attempt to justify it, are both completely undercut by the way the recruiting process at top-tier schools actually works. Nearly everyone at YLS has a job lined up early in their second year. Interviewing for an entry-level government job in the midwest during one's 3L year is certainly consistent with Justice Thomas' position.
This liberal framing presupposes a form of affirmative action that is rarely found in the real world. AA programs as they developed became vehicles for discounting the dissimilarity of resumes. By doing that, they made race a more salient consideration, not a less salient one.
Before the advent of affirmative action, I once had surgery where my surgeon and anesthesiologist were both black; I didn't think twice about that, because I assumed they had the same abilities and training as doctors of any race. That assumption made their race irrelevant. Unfortunately, the usual forms of affirmative action invalidate that assumption, and make race a proxy for a lower level of ability and training. That has the effect of discounting the AA beneficiary's degree in exactly the way Thomas describes.
One aspect of Thomas's argument has been that AA recipients - prominently including black AA recipients - are commonly - and sometimes rightly - perceived as less qualified. But that is merely one aspect, and not obviously the most prominent aspect, of Thomas's - and others' - set of arguments. Don't confuse assumptions and narrow perceptions with the broader and more complex realities.
In fact, I didn't even mention grades. Your hypothetical of two people with roughly identical LSAT and GPA numbers is not the reality. Grades and test scores are valid measures, but probably the best indicator is the huge disparity in dropout rates. A degree from a 2nd or 3rd tier school is certainly better than flunking out of a top-tier school. Proponents of AA seem to routinely ignore that critical measurement.
But I wasn't directly addressing Thomas' argument in my previous comment, I was merely correcting your factual errors.
A better predictor is students' performance in undergraduate school. Clarence Thomas demonstrated he was a good student by graduating with honors from Holy Cross.
A couple of other thoughts: People tend to hire people who remind them of themselves, who they feel comfortable, with, which means outsiders have a hard time breaking in. As another example, despite having served on the Stanford Law Review, Sandra Day O'Connor could not get a firm job, and had to start as a Deputy County Attorney for San Mateo, California.
Finally, I would have loved to have a graduate of a "lesser" law school, like SMU's Harriet Miers, on the Supreme Court
On what are you basing the claim that affirmative action admissions imply lower levels of ability or training among graduates? Absent evidence that schools are systematically lowering their degree requirements for those admitted under affirmative action, doesn't your claim really amount to affirmative action serving as a proxy for racism -- i.e., if we can't any longer say that otherwise qualified members of a racial minority are not good enough because they are members of a racial minority, we can still say that otherwise qualified members of a racial minority are not good enough because they were admitted under affirmative action?
I am also surprised that the bump in popularity that Thomas got after his interview demanded such a swift counterattack.
But I guess the attack is political isn't it? The left-wing has been ginning up the story for years about nutso-Thomas supposedly appointed to the bench despite being an idiot, supposedly appointed to the bench despite being a liar.
For shame.
i) If underachieving students admitted under AA are being failed out of top-tier schools, then what is the basis for claiming that those admitted under AA who do not flunk out are still not as qualified as non-AA graduates?
ii) If a student admitted under AA flunks out, is that the fault of the school for giving the student a chance in the first place? Certainly you can make a case for AA admittees being informed prior to committing that they may be under-prepared and may face a difficult time pursuing a degree at a top-tier school; but it seems that, beyond that, the success or failure of the student depends mostly on the student, not on the admissions committee.
The problem with Thomas's (and presumable your) position is this: He doesn't object to the benefits of AA (getting into Yale; nominated to the Supreme Court), he just objects to the stigma of AA (discounted Yale degree; view that he's not as smart as the other SC justices). But Thomas would be the first one to argue that once he got there, he proved he belonged: he merited his law degree(having done better than half of his classmates) and he deserves to remain on the Court (having written opinions that his colleagues have signed on to). Thomas has weighed the stigma against the benefits of AA and has determined that the benefits outweigh the stigma. Yet, Thomas would use the stigma of AA as an argument to deny the benefits of AA to all others. That is fine, if only Thomas would lead by example - if he renounced the benefits of AA that he has enjoyed by return his Yale diploma and resigning from the Court. Why doesn't he? Because AA worked -- he has proven that he belonged (even though he needed AA to get in the door).
On the AAG title, it is an entry level title here in Ohio as well. It is true that AAG is a higher up at Justice in DC, but Assistant U.S. Attorney is an entry level title in the hinterlands.
While in grad school years ago at a prestigious private US university, the head of HR for a prestigious global consulting firm told me a story about a classmate. He had rejected the classmate's application for a job, as had all other firms the preceeding year. My classmate spent her summer practicing interviewing with great success and easily obtained offers from many firms the following year, including McKinsey &Co. Ironically, as the story goes, she rejected Deloitte to take the McKinsey offer. Deloitte could have had her without competition if it could have seen past her poor interviewing skills the year before, but they preferred to hire a good interviewer rather than a good employee.
It is easily conceivable that Thomas' poor interviewing skill resulted in an unsuccessful job search. Occam's razor?
I would say that Universities have a moral obligation to make that clear to AA admittees. However, it might against their short term incentives to do so. Would a student would rather go to a school that is honest or one that massages the student's ego?
Liberals aren't any more foolish with their own money than conservatives are. That only happens with other people's money.
No, you ninny, there've only been 110 Justices total, out of the many thousands (tens of thousands?) of lawyers, even among those with elite law degrees. Getting to the point where you become a Justice has clear aspects of randomness --- did you get cancer or get hit by a car? Was your political party in control at the time a nomination came up (would Ruth Ginsberg have been nominated if we'd have had eight more years of Republican administrations in place of Clinton?) Did you make a damnfool mistake, like accepting a special prosecutor appointment? He's not saying that Justices are seelcted by lottery, he's pointing out that its in part of matter of luck to be in a position to be nominated.
How many white engineering graduates of UM-Rolla or Kansas State were less qualified as HS seniors than minorities invited to fail at MIT or Caltech?
What does stand out in this mess is that both Lawyer Hill and Lawyer Thomas are (1) Yale grads, (2) black. And one of them is still telling a big lie 16 years later. Which one? I do not know. Glad neither one, or at least the liar, not being a sworn witness at a trial.
Which is a damn sight different than the claim that "random chance necessarily plays the overwhelming role in selecting who gets the job." Beyond that, luck playing a part is no different than in the getting of the vast majority of jobs, nor do some of the "luck" factors you present qualify as random events.
I've always held minority applicants should be given the option of AA consideration or simply being part of the non-AA pool. Then then transcript and degree could prominently display NON-AA for those who choose to compete head-to-head with everybody else. They deserve that chance. They have earned it.
I'm very interested to hear what you think leads to someone becoming a Supreme Court Justice other than luck. In the last 20 years or so, there are really two parts to becoming a Supreme Court Justice. The first and (by far) the hardest part is becoming a federal court of appeals judge, a position conferred on about 10 individuals per year nationwide, and, realistically speaking, getting that job at a quite young age (perhaps 2-3 individuals per year nationwide). The second is being the one federal court of appeals that the President wants to nominate. I'm very interested to hear what qualities you think determine which people get that. Do you see it as a meritocracy, in which the best and brightest are chosen?
You made the claim that random chance necessarily plays the overwhelming role, yet you have offered neither evidence to support that claim nor that the factors that you have subsequently mentioned are random events.
They do not compete head-to-head after they are admitted?
My daughter is starting her second year of law school at a top school. She's received several job offers for next summer; summer hires are offered permanent jobs unless they screw up badly. So she'll be set with a post-graduation job long before graduation. Starting salaries at firms in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and a few other cities are now running $160,000 a year for grads of top law schools. She said it doesn't matter whether you're in the top, middle or bottom of the class. Students at second-tier law schools do need high class rank to be considered at big firms; the rest go to small firms or to government jobs, which pay much less.
To say that Missouri job was a plum is BS. I went to U of Illinois next to Missouri in the late 70s and such a job would be a bottom choice for anyone in my school. For a Yalie, it must have really hurt. I personally would have rather moved back in with my parents and hang out a shingle than move to Missouri for an AG job.
As I remember it, the preference for jobs was:
1. Big firm big city
2. Small firm big city
3. Corporate job big city
4. Any firm small city
5. Corporate job small city
6. Private practice if you could afford it
7. Atty Gen in state
8. State atty. in state
9. Public defender in state
10. Atty Gen out of state
11. State atty. out of state
12. Public defender out of state
Is it similar today?
I'd like second Pig Bodine's point above. That ascending to the Supreme Court is something very hard to do does not make the process random, a idea so ludicrous I'm surprised Orin has the stones to pretend otherwise. I'd be fascinated for Orin to expand on this amazing idea, in a non-facetious manner for a change.
Whatever info Orin Kerr has posted, the fact remains that Thomas's first job was not crap, and it later become incredibly beneficial in giving him the political connections and patronage necessary to be nominated for a SC opening. The wah-wah sob story is rather dubious and unbecoming, but is to be expected for someone like Thomas.
Yes. But why put off the moment when they start to compete head-to-head? An employer looking at a prospect with NON-AA on both undergraduate degree and graduate degree will see someone who is not afraid of competition and has the character to face it. That's valuable information about a person.
I doubt this. I mean, people see Exeter on a resume and discount the person's grades ("Rich kid who had tutors"). You're assuming everyone has the same attitudes toward everything.
I don't believe you; I don't think you'd be "fascinated" at all. I think that, because your arguments against Thomas are so bankrupt, you're deliberately interpreting Orin's statement in an incredibly stupid way (*) so that you can deflect attention from that fact.
It's not "hard" to get on the Court. It's "hard" to get a job with Cravath. You have to be smart and put in a ton of work to get it. But there's nothing you can "do" to get on the Supreme Court. You have to be in the right place at the right time, and you have zero control over that. The window of opportunity comes once or twice in your life, and if you're not there, tough for you. For instance, if Thurgood Marshall's health had forced him off the court a year earlier, Thomas wouldn't have been on the Circuit Court at the time, and couldn't/wouldn't have been nominated. That's luck. It's not literally "random," but it's luck. If Marshall had managed to hang on for one more year, it's likely, with Bush trailing so badly in the polls, that Bush wouldn't have been able to get anyone -- let alone Thomas -- on the Court; had he managed to hang on for a year and a half, Clinton would have been president and Thomas certainly wouldn't have been nominated. All luck. The next Court opening under a GOP president wouldn't have been for fifteen years, at which point he might have been bypassed for someone younger. All luck. Not something under his control, not unless he arranged to tamper with the brakes on Thurgood Marshall's car at the right time.
(*) Note that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming it's deliberate.
Similar to your assumption about employers, about "people"?
The answer to the question should be obvious: it is quite possible to under-perform without flunking out.
But the question is absurd. You could just as well say, "The Texas Rangers were the best team in their division this year (if you don't count all the games they lost)."
I'm actually presuming the opposite. I see a variety of attitudes. I'd like to see the kid with the competitive attitude who wants to go head-to-head with the best in the admissions compeition have the opportunity to do just that. I realize others have the attitude that the kid should be denied that opportunity because of his skin color.
To start with Pig Bodine, I believe I have gone first, actually. I said that I think luck is the reason why someone is appointed. You objected on the ground that this was false. When I asked you what you think it is beyond luck, your response was "You go first." But I believe I did go first; I said it was about luck. Oh well.
Moving to the case for the job being mostly about luck, I have 9 names:
Roberts
Alito
Ginsburg
Breyer
Stevens
Scalia
Kennedy
Thomas
Souter
For each one of these, there are maybe 1000 lawyers equally smart who could have been in the same position they were in. This group of 9 is notable mostly for having lightning strike that let them get federal appellate jobs at a young age. There was an opening, a supportive Senator or two, they had the right set of views, and then they all had random connections with the judge-pickers or others influential with them that led them to get the nod for the court of appeals (e.g., Reagan getting AMK on the Ninth; Alito going from OLC to the USAO to the CA3, etc.). They all then had tremendous strokes of luck to get on the Court, both in terms of random events (Miers falling through with Alito, etc., Ginsburg gets the first pick in the Clinton years because Arnold'd medical record was too troubling, Breyer was recovering from a bike accident, etc.) and random connections (Stevens was close with AG Levi, who is AG only because of Watergate, and Levi recommends him to Ford).
True, many of these Justices were credentialed, but those credentials were about luck, too. Take the job of Supreme Court law clerk, something that three Justices (Roberts, Breyer, Stevens) had and that people often discuss as being about merit. That job doesn't go to the smartest 36 law school graduates in the country. There are probably 500 graduates who could do the job just as well or better than the 36 that are picked. But they are the 36 lucky ones, who lucked out in terms of connections, or first year grades, or the right choice of law school, or whatever it was that put them on the "short list" for such a job.
In any event, I have a feeling you're not going to respond to my inquiry about what you think makes someone a Supreme Court Justice. That's unfortunate; I can't really understand why you disagree with me, or why you seem to think I am trying to argue in bad faith. Quite puzzling, really, but I guess that's what happens with anonymous comments. I'm curious, are you new here? We usually aim for more sophisticated and thoughtful comments than what you have been writing, whether from the left or the right.
In direct contrast to the rabidly low focus on Thomas (his book is little more than pretext), the on-going Al Durah Affair - perhaps the most egregious and, in effect, malevolent misuse of MSM power in the last three decades and more - receives virtually no commentary in the NYT, and little elsewhere in the MSM. Of course Dreyfus took over a decade to resolve, but if society waits for the NYT and other centers of raw media power to better adjust their priorities before the Al Durah Affair is properly resolved we're likely to wait an eternity.
And yes, raw power mongering is an apposite conception applied to the MSM here, as elsewhere. It's additionally telling that there are exceedingly few Zolas in the present context vis-a-vis L'Affaire Al-Durah - it's likewise telling that these Zolas receive scant press and very nearly no in-depth reporting and commentary. This is the type of thing that flys under the radar when ideologically and politically based obsessive/compulsive disorders are directed at things like absurdly tendentious attitudes and narratives concerning Thomas, BDS, etc. Priorities. A conscience, whether at an individual level or at a societal level, can abide only so many assaults before it succombs to apathy, incoherence and other disorders.
Where is your evidence that top-tier law schools are graduating students, admitted under AA, who do not perform up to standards?
I see you're still in the comment threads, so I just want to point out my long response to you posted about an hour ago; I worry that you may have missed it. I look forward to your response.
Best,
Orin Kerr
I don't contest most of what's written up there. There is no doubt that an SC job is very hard to get - this does not make it random. There is no doubt that many other lawyers could fill an SC's justice slot - this does not make it random. Everything above is true; it's just unfortunate that they don't actually prove what you're saying.
You seem to suggest that getting a SC appointment is like winning the Publisher's House Clearing Sweepstakes, as if Clarence Thomas was just twiddling his thumbs at home one day and some freak stopped by to tell him he's won. What Thomas did was follow a predictable trajectory of nearly any lawyer who wants a top political position, by making connections and doing the prep work so that when the opportunity does arise (as it nearly always does in some form or another), he was ready to grab it. There is no mystery there. Thomas's early connections helped raise his SC probability from zero to slightly above zero; extenuate circumstances brought on by the President's desires and the political realties of the Senate helped pave the way.
None of this to me constitutes randomness. It is a stupid way to choose a Justice, but a fairly orderly and transparent one.
Now a chance for my question: Do you think that Thomas's first job played no role in preparing his way for an SC appointment? That his connections with Mr. Danforth, future big-shot senator, weren't the tinnest bit helpful in the entire process? That perhaps there were significant benefits to the job not expressed in dollar signs?
PB, if there are 110 total Justices out of the thousands of potentially qualified attorneys, yes, you would infer that random factors play the overwhelmingly dominant role.
Thomas has either let a trip be laid on him or he is laying a trip on himself about Yale. Or maybe the trip he is laying on himself is because it works for him with certain members of the public. Or maybe he believes what he says sincerely. Whatever. Those are his mind games.
Peace,
Ben
In reading over your comments, I get the feeling that you think I am trying to argue something sub silentio that I am not actually arguing, and that you are attacking me for a perceived argument that you think I believe but haven't stated. It's quite an odd experience, although your hostility is rather invigorating in an odd sort of way.
Beem: I think it's pretty clear that the Danforth connection turned out to be critical to Thomas's long term future. In particular, Danforth brought Thomas to DC when Danforth was elected to the U.S. Senate, and it seems that working for Danforth in the late 1970s helped push Thomas's politics from the left to the right. As best I can tell, it was arriving in DC as a black conservative on Danforth's staff around 1980 that was the key to Thomas's future. I'm curious, does anyone argue to the contrary? I would think that these claims are pretty uncontroversial. I certainly haven't heard Justice Thomas argue anything different; I understand Thomas to focus on his job options in 1974, not what happened in the Reagan and Bush years.
Beem, sadly, both you and PB seem to share the common affliction of not understanding randomness at all. So lets try taking it in little pieces.
Let's say that there are 100,000 law school graduates in year 1. Some proportion of them, let's say 10,000, graduate from elite schools. The difference between the elite school lawyers and the other 90,000 are in part random: some of them are more skilled or more intelligent, certainly, but some of them had familial connections to the big schools, have money to pay for school, and so forth; conversely, some of the 90,000 were probably quite capable of the work in the elite schools, but for various reasons (such as family demands, desire to stay in-state, financial issues, etc) they didnt' do so. Much of this is random.
Then, among those 10,000, some number of them, by year 10 or so, are dead, in car accidents and the like. Purely random. Among the survivors, some of them are Republicans in Democratic districts, and so aren't nominated for judgeships at the appropriate time. Of that number --- let's say it's 5000 now --- only 10 or 20 may actually be nominated, and they may or may not be confirmed. This pares it down to maybe 5 out of the original cohort, and many of the steps that cull the losers are completely random.
And now, that cohort has to compete with the cohorts from, say, a 20 year span, so the competition is really about 200 judges for the 20 year span that our cohort of candidates might conceivably be nominated. In that 20 year span you might expect 3-5 vacancies. At that last stage, you still have the issue of whether you're associated politically with the right party at the right time, which is itself random.
So yes, it is by far dominated by chance.
Why's that? There is one Pope out of more than one billion Roman Catholics. Should I infer that he was randomnly chosen? Exactly how does rarity or exclusivity imply randomness?
First, I fail to see how Mr. Danforth, or the position of Assistant Attorney General, is remotely analogous to Jim Crow. Perhaps you should spend more time thinking and less time wringing out whatever hysterical comparison comes to mind. Second, you seem to be accepting the fact that, save that job, Clarence Thomas could very well not have gotten the seat. Given that, shouldn't Thomas be incredibly grateful for a job that turned out to be so beneficial in his future career? Insofar as one can raise one's chances in the SC competition, there is very little that is as valuable as political connections from powerful people like Mr. Danforth.
There are things that a SC aspirant cannot control. There are thing that a SC aspirant can. Of the latter category, very few things are as useful as political connections. Thomas's first job was enormously beneficial in that regard. I frankly do not get why this idea is so hard to grasp, save delibrate obliviousness. I cannot dumb this down further, so if you don't get it now, then you never will.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Where is the assumption here? People means some people. I'm not sure why you would read it as "all people". If someone means something categorically, they usually make that clear.
If not, which of the various potential culling factors --- premature death, election results, personal situation, and so on --- that I identified as random do you think are, in fact, not a matter of chance or randomness?
Honestly, I'd really recommend the recent book The Black Swan; I suspect you need rather more education on chance, randomness, stochastic systems, than you exhibit so far.
Wait. Should I be inferring that you actually don't understand the difference between "randomly chosen" and "getting the job is dominated by chance"?
Note that "factors outside my control" does not appear in the definition.
Wait. Should I be inferring that the 1-in-a-billion nature of the Papacy means that getting that job is dominated by chance?
If you can't see this, it is only because you have absolutely no knowledge of the legal job market. In which case... Why comment?
Clarence Thomas may have a hunch that it was the first. But to know the answer, more information is needed. First, what jobs did he apply for (both in his first year, second year, and at graduation)? Second, who interviewed him? (Those individuals could be interviewed). Third, who were the successful applicants for those positions? Then, the applicants can be compared with Clarence Thomas. And the factual issues could be investigated.
For example, if Clarence Thomas was not interested in working in NY and did not apply to NY law firms, then obviously there would have been no discrimination against him in that job market.
It would be interesting to look at other African American students at Yale, Harvard, and other law schools who graduated in 1974 and see what jobs they were offered and how they did ultimately.
It may be that Clarence Thomas perceived that he was subjected to discrimination based on the affirmative action stereotpe but he was actually subjected to racial discrimination of the old-fashioned variety or that there was another reason.
Another question is also what did the Yale career services office do to help him get a job in an area that he preferred.
What was amazing to me was the degree of Thomas's bitterness at Yale today. It is one thing to say that when he graduated he felt the degree was not worth much money, but it cannot be disputed that it was the old-boy network of Yale alums, including Danforth, that ultimately led to his appointment to the Supreme Court, which is one of the best jobs a lawyer can have.
An interesting question for Thomas would be what kind of job did he want when he was in law school? Does he feel that his career would have been better if he had had the job of his choice when he graduated law school? Is there another job that he would like now?
My daughter did note that his current job does not pay very well for lawyers. In fact, I believe that he has the lowest amount of assets of any judge on the Supreme Court (at least before his book was published).
However, if he would rather be a partner at a large law firm now, I'm sure there are many firms that would be willing to hire him &pay him millions.
(Are we to assume Thomas sought in many places for work?)
random
unsystematic, unmethodical, arbitrary, unplanned, undirected, casual, indiscriminate, nonspecific, haphazard, stray, erratic; chance, accidental.
Sounds to me like a good description of how SC Justices are chosen.
Consider the opposite, a "systematic" method: choose highest ranked students, send them to special school for judges and rank/test them every year, even as judges. Smartest ones go on to higher courts as vacancies arise and a few ultimately become "Supremes." That's systematic. We don't have systematic as there is not even the pretense that the people nominated are "best qualified."
It's like the old saw "The Supreme Court is supreme not because it is wisest but because it is last."
Yes, you should.
You are assuming that the word "random" means "lets put the names of one billion Catholics into a box and pick one". That is not what it means. It simply means that the outcome or result of a process is not predictable.
You certainly know little about mathematics, and I suspect you know as much about the law.
More importantly, we would have taken a degree from an Ivy League school, regardless of color or gender over other candidates from the top of the class at a second tier school.
What an asinine way to run a legal system.
For nice guy Orin Kerr, this is a pretty vicious statement.
Apparently you aren't that familiar with Caltech. Unless you consider Asians 'minorities', minorities comprise about 1% of the student population. Asians comprise 30-40% of the school population. About another 10% of the school is Europeans on Student visas.
If you don't understand that, you're either really obtuse or you're being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative.
Beem:No; they just don't prove the stupid interpretation you're putting on what he's saying.
I think that his first job played no role in preparing his way -- not in the way you mean. He was an entry-level lawyer in the state AG's office in Missouri. Do many Supreme Court justices come from there? Perhaps more to the point, there were likely many other lawyers in the state AG's office in Missouri during the eight years that Danforth was state AG. Did any of them use their connections with Danforth to become Supreme Court justices?
He was hired by a state attorney general, not a "future senator." The odds that said attorney general would run for senate -- well, it's not an odd career trajectory, to be sure. But the odds that he would do so and win -- well, that was pretty lucky for Thomas, wasn't it? But guess what? Danforth had already run for the Senate, six years earlier -- and lost! That was really lucky for Thomas, wasn't it? The fact that Danforth became respected by an awful lot of people and was years later able to shepherd Thomas through the nomination... well, that's pretty darn lucky. If any of these things go differently, Thomas doesn't make the Court.
That is not, contrary to what you wrote, like "nearly every job search under the sun." For one thing, it's not really a "job search" at all. Even if Alito jokingly wrote it in his yearbook, nobody "searches" for a job on the Court. For another, most "job searches" are interchangeable; if your goal is to be a BigLaw partner, you can do well at Skadden, or Cravath, or Morgan Lewis, or.... Of course, some things will be out of your control, but oodles of Yale Law grads will do it every year. You don't have to be in the right place at the right time to end up a BigLaw partner. There's not one single window of opportunity. You don't have to hope that one of 9 people in the U.S. dies (or becomes seriously ill) at exactly the right time.
And yet, "nearly any lawyer" doesn't make it to the Court.
We're not talking about a "top political position." We're talking about the Supreme Court.
(Not that Yale was anything close to unique in that regard, of course -- but I think Thomas was expecting a little more support for an alum.)
This doesn't sound like part of the catechism. When I was in parochial school, we were taught to work as if everything depended on us, and pray as if everything depended on God.
Mr. Kerr is emphasizing the element of chance, but surely not denying that there are actions that individuals take that increase their chance.
Mr. Pig is emphasizing the element of choice, but acknowledges that there is an element of chance in being selected for a position on the Supreme Court (as there is with most job searches).
Mr. Nierporent, for his part, says that it is "hard" to get a job at Cravath. But I say you have to be lucky too. If you had interviewed with Cravath associate A instead of associate B, maybe you would have gotten that summer offer. (Assuming, of course, that you have excellent grades which makes it possible to even have a chance at getting the position at all.)
Here is a mathematically correct assessment of the situation. Supreme Court justices are selected randomly, but not all individuals are equally likely to be selected. Now, note that my use of the word "random" contradicts that used in statistics, which requires that all individuals be exactly equally likely to be selected. (Hence the criticism in statistics that a sample is not "truly random.") But, even in statisticians call things that are not truly random, random. When they are "random enough" to be called random.
All this is too say that Pig's criticisms, while perhaps technically correct if you want to be extremely anal and adopt one particular definition of random (i.e. the statistical one, there are looser non-statistical definitions of random), is basically useless. There is nothing wrong with saying that something that has a very large degree of chance is "random," especially if you are using a looser definition of random. Further, I think implied in Kerr's statement is the narrowing of the universe. He is not saying "random" with respect to the universe of all persons. He is saying "random" with respect to the universe of all individuals near the top of the profession who might be considered. I would still say that Mr. Kerr is wrong if we fix enough variables. Given President Bush as President, Ms. Miers was not selected at random. Maybe if we fix less variables, it is random.
Whatever. This discussion is not worth having. It is anal in the extreme.
Excellent comment. I suspect that's basically right, and it's a helpful effort to reconcile the different perspectives.
So, "people" authoritatively means "some people," regardless of context? It doesn't mean a few people, or most people and it most assuredly doesn't mean all people? Strunk & White? Or some other authoritative source? Yes, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, mine was an assumption, albeit one read within the given context. Too though, that particular comment was intended more to take note of a human foible, one we all share. Excluding yourself, certainly.
I note this more because it reflects yet another example - as if more are needed - of how discussions tend to devolve when assumptions and MSM-styled talking-head repetitions concerning Thomas, and similarly burdened topics, are addressed.
Priorities.
Thomas got an interview with Danforth when the future senator called a Yale Law Prof he knew to find young soon to be grads for his new job as Missouri AG. Another student told the professor of Thomas and Danforth travelled to YLS to interview him. He was offered a job after the interview but would not accept until he visited the office and the area.
If random chance does NOT play the overwhelming role in selecting who gets on the Court, i.e. if the process is deterministic, then it should be childs play to predict the name of the next individual who will get on the Court.
Child's play, assuming only that all the relevant variables can be identified, and their values specified, along with the population of possible individuals, and specific time frame within which all these factors and their interactions apply.
Now, that's funny!
Meg