The Dry Wit of Antonin Scalia

Lawrence Lessig: "Supreme Court? Funny story ..." (Photo by Jana Birchum)

After talking to the Chronicle last week, Netroots nation keynote speaker Lawrence Lessig was in town to further push his Change Congress campaign reform pledge drive. The big news today is that he has launched an impartial blogger council (or more counsel) to act as a rolling critique/detached advisory board for his political reform movement.

But talking of counsel, Mr. Creative Commmons is a lawyer. A little-remembered part of Lessig's career is that he clerked for Judge (now Justice) Antonin Scalia, and he took time to reveal an anecdote about his hiring. It seems that, after an interview that devolved into an *ahem* debate about statutory regulation, Scalia told him he was hired. The only problem was that Scalia had to be in a meeting, so Lessig had to stick around for half an hour, getting mocked by the other, hard-line conservative clerks, until Scalia got back to say, "Hey, guys, meet your new colleague."

Awkward.