REBRIEF: the grand old party sounded like a damn good time

+ links to better understand the Supreme Court's decisions

Welcome to debrief! This newsletter is on pause and will be sent out semimonthly while I finish writing my book. Please enjoy this writing and life update, as well as an essay from the archives. Thank you so much for reading—I can’t wait to be back in full force!

The Fourth of July was a bizarre one this year. The day purportedly celebrating American independence from monarchical rule was preceded by three Supreme Court decisions making our nation more susceptible to monarchical rule. (But don’t panic! Susceptibility doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to happen, okay? Register to vote, if you haven’t already!)

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

Thirteen days before, there was Department of State v. Muñoz, splitting the “fundamental right of marriage” in the U.S. into two rights: (1) the right to marry, which is fundamental; and (2) the right to live with your spouse in the U.S., which is not fundamental. In other words, you can marry an undocumented immigrant—but you better be prepared to move to El Salvador if you want to cohabitate. (Yes, this is true even if you are a U.S. citizen.) This splitting of marital hairs essentially re-introduces the concept of second-tier marriages, which Obergefell v. Hodges—the opinion legalizing gay marriage federally in 2015—previously found to be a due process (i.e., fundamental) right. It’s hard to read Muñoz as anything but a slow retreat from marriage equality.

Further reading: The Supreme Court Just Took Its First Swipe at Marriage Equality by Elie Mystal

Six days before, there was Loper v. Raimondo AKA an uptick in Googling “Chevron deference” or, for those who went to law school, the case that rendered whatever we learned in Leg Reg or Administrative Law null and void. Loper, at the end of the day, is about where courts should come out when executive agency rules are challenged. Under Chevron, courts typically deferred to the agency on the basis that agencies are subject matter experts, have given this a lot of thought, etc. Now, courts are supposed to review agency actions anew, as if they were the agency. Besides being a lot of extra work for the judiciary, there’s also substantial hand-wringing about whether judges will abuse this newfound power to further their political goals.

Further reading: The Supreme Court just made a massive power grab it will come to regret by Ian Millhiser

And three days before, Trump v. United States, which holds that presidents (1) have absolute immunity when exercising their exclusive, “preclusive” presidential powers, (2) have presumptive immunity with respect to “official” acts, and (3) have no immunity with respect to “unofficial” acts, but (4) cannot be prosecuted for unofficial acts using evidence from official acts. Much has been written about this decision, so I will just leave you with this:

Further reading: Chief Justice Roberts Turns Right by Steve Vladeck & John Roberts Makes His Bid for Infamy by Jamelle Bouie

In light of these opinions and the announcement of YLS grad J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate for 2024—including the subsequent pearl-clutching about how could Vance be both a product of an elite institution and rail against it so much—I wanted to re-publish an essay I wrote two years ago about the allure of the Republican Party. I’ve been asking friends a similar question: How far would you go for power, a shot at cementing your name in the history books, the opportunity to see events that not even the elite could imagine? And how will you know when you’ve crossed that line?

I used to be a Republican. I wasn't like the other Republicans, though—I was a cool Republican (or so I thought), one that registered as an Independent and would say things like, “I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative.” I read a lot of Ayn Rand and F. Scott Fitzgerald because it made me feel smart, a sort of high school intellectual masturbation. My high school boyfriend, whom I thought was extremely cool and intelligent at the time, didn't believe in climate change and voted for third-party candidates. We talked sometimes about politics, feeling superior about how evidence-based and rational our beliefs were in comparison to others'.

When college admissions results came out and my application was unceremoniously rejected by all of the Ivy League schools I had applied to except for Yale, my ego was, predictably, majorly bruised. Wasn't I smart, after all? Didn't I get the best grades? Hadn't I done everything “right,” like others had told me to?

If you had asked me back then whether I supported affirmative action, I probably would have said no. I didn't understand why affirmative action was necessary, why people didn't just study harder. But the bigger thing, in retrospect, was that I just didn't care about other people. I cared about myself and wanting to amass power for myself. It wasn't that I purposely didn't care about others—rather, I passively didn't care about others, because caring about others required mental energy, which I preferred to reserve for thinking about my own advancement in society. With a chip on my shoulder from college admissions results (many other students I met at Admitted Students Days were choosing between multiple Ivy League schools, to my flaming chagrin and deadening shame), I entered college wanting one thing and one thing only: power.

My parents were also anti-affirmative action and saw it as a method for schools to discriminate against Asian Americans, in direct contravention of the admissions system they had grown up with in China—heavily reliant on tests, single exams essentially determining the rest of your life. They had been fostered in that system and, moreover, thrived in that system. It was the only system they knew, and it was a system that they were well-prepared to guide me through, as well. They had already researched and signed me up for SAT prep classes by sophomore year of high school, and my mom sat me down, insisting that I create an SAT study schedule for her review and approval. They, too, wanted power for me (although they may not have called it that), and they saw every instance of affirmative action as one less spot for me, for the children of family friends, for other Asian Americans.

The Republican party, in my opinion, are excellent at two things: first, aligning themselves with the aesthetic of “old money,” and second, convincing individuals that the party will foster those individuals' ascent into power and old money if they join—and show them a good time all along the way. And when I was 18, the "Grand Old Party" sounded pretty damn fun. I wanted grandeur; I wanted to be old money; and I wanted to party. What was not to love?

During 1L, it looked like staying conservative and joining the conservative legal student organization, the Federalist Society (or “Fed Soc,” for short), was the right move. Before classes even started, my assigned Women's Law Association mentor turned out to be an earnest Fed Soc member and immediately began plying me with tactical information about how to get good grades (study using past exams and outlines of students who had gotten the best grades in the professor's class) and how to position myself for a prestigious clerkship with a federal appellate judge, which tacitly opens up the possibility of the ultimate law student brass ring—a Supreme Court clerkship. I felt a little overwhelmed by how fast she was throwing things at me, but I also wanted to be able to keep up and strategize along with the best of them. If this was the price of power, then it was surely a price that I would pay.

The price seemed small at first. Come to meetings, eat the catered lunches (frequently Chick-fil-a), socialize a bit, contribute your own outlines and exams after grades came out each semester. It was easy enough, and in return, someone made efforts on your behalf to track down outlines and exams for visiting professors from their former schools and a Convention fund sent you and other members to DC each year, where you got to brush shoulders with federal judges, including the prestigious “feeder” judges, whose former clerks often ascended to the ranks of Supreme Court clerks. It was the closest that I had ever gotten to that level of power, and it felt intoxicating. It wasn't until later that I realized what the true price for that level of power was.

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