Via Tony Mauro, we learn something that might interest the law students in the VC readership: The first-year law school grades of Harvard Law School Dean (and SG nominee) Elena Kagan. First-year students who are assuming that their 1L grades will determine everything might be interested to know that in her first semester at Harvard, Kagan earned a B in criminal law and a B- in torts. She then recovered in the spring, earning mostly straight A's with one A-, and she went on to clerk for the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court; to become a tenured professor at Chicago and Harvard; and then to become Harvard's very popular Dean and now likely will be the Justice Department's top Supreme Court lawyer. So much for first-semester grades as destiny.

   Of course, Kagan has already had the ultimate revenge for a law student who received a B- in torts: She became the Dean of the law school and pushed through grading reform that abolished letter grades.