Kathleen M. Sullivan

This page was created in 2009 and has been archived.

Kathleen M. Sullivan was considered a potential nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Barack Obama.

Education

Sullivan received an undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1976, from Oxford University in 1978 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981.

Career

• 2010-Present: Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP
• 1993-2009: Professor, Stanford Law School
• 2005-2010: Chair, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP
• 1999-2004: Dean, Stanford Law School
• 1984-1993: Professor, Harvard Law School
• 1982-1984: Attorney, private practice
• 1981-1982: Law Clerk for Judge James Oakes

Notable writings

Privacy/abortion

In 1992, Professor Sullivan published an article regarding abortion jurisprudence. Her arguments led her to conclude that courts should have the ultimate authority to decide the abortion issue: "If a pro-choice majority commands the polls, who needs a pro-Roe majority on the court? The answer is that some things are too precious and fragile to be left to politics, and women’s reproductive freedom is one of them."

In 1986, Professor Sullivan and others (including Professor Laurence Tribe) filed the respondent’s brief in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). Her brief challenged a Georgia sodomy law as unconstitutional, arguing that the state failed to provide a “substantial justification for interference with this zone.”

Fourteenth Amendment/Equal protection

In 2006, Professor Sullivan represented the Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate before an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit. The school system was defending a race-based admissions policy, whereby a child could only be admitted if she had one relative who lived in Hawaii in 1778.

In 2002, Professor Sullivan joined several other law school deans in submitting an amici curiae brief in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court case that evaluated the constitutionality of affirmative action programs in higher education. Among other points, the brief argued that “[s]ocial expectations have crystallized around Justice Powell’s decision in Bakke, and these expectations strongly militate against this Court’s previous instructions to universities.” The brief also highlighted and relied on stare decisis.

In 1990, Professor Sullivan wrote a law review article that discussed affirmative action and critiqued the Supreme Court’s decision in J.A. Croson. In that publication, she argued in favor of continuing affirmative action policies: “So long as the nation’s legacy of race discrimination lingers, a wiser Supreme Court would tolerate one city’s reasonable efforts to make amends.”

First Amendment

Professor Sullivan testified against the proposed McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation in 2000, stating that “campaign finance regulation plainly amounts to a restriction upon political speech. It follows that it should not be undertaken unless it has a very strong justification - that is, unless we are practically certain that it will really work . . . . But they haven’t. [E]arlier attempts at campaign finance reform have had unintended and antidemocratic consequences, and . . . further efforts at similar reforms are likely to be similarly ineffective. When the cure has been worse than the disease, the solution is not more doses of the same medicine.” As an alternative to limiting contributions, Professor Sullivan stated that mandatory disclosure and public subsidies “are consistent with both democracy and the Constitution.” Professor Sullivan also represented Senator Mitch McConnell is his challenge to the McCain-Feingold legislation once it was enacted into law. Professor Sullivan also published several law review articles regarding this topic.

Separation of powers

In 2006, Professor Sullivan joined several other law professors and signed a letter to Congress criticizing the “Justice Department’s defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States.” The professors argue that the Justice Department defense memorandum “fail[ed] to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law.” This letter was published in the February 9, 2006 New York Review of Books.

Professor Sullivan served on the American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements. Among other things, the Task Force “oppose[d], as contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, a President’s issuance of signing statements to claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law he has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress[.]”

Federalism

In a 1996 New York Times opinion column, Professor Sullivan critiqued those who argue that "there is no reason today to suppose that the problem of faction is better solved by the Federal Government than by the states.” As part of that critique, she criticized the behavior of states and localities: “Most states today are too big to permit participatory democracy. And when they do, they practice government largely by passion and interest, not reason and deliberation, just as Madison predicted. Groundswells of passion led California voters, for example, to enact Proposition 187 (now enjoined), which would deny most public services to illegal aliens and their children.”

Professor Sullivan advocated in favor of “nationalizing election procedures” in a 2000 New York Times opinion column.

Judicial confirmations

In 2005, Professor Sullivan suggested five questions for Senators to ask Judge Roberts during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

In a 1990 New York Times opinion column, Professor Sullivan criticized President Bush’s nomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court. In this column, Professor Sullivan said: “The President’s choice [of Souter] is more political than he let on, and the Court is far less political than his rhetoric suggests. . . . But the slogan that Mr. Bush’s judge ‘will not legislate from the bench’ is an empty cliche. No Justice— least of all Justice Brennan, perhaps the veiled target of such attacks—’legislates’ from the bench when voting to uphold a constitutional right.”