Nandu:
Thanks for the etymological history on NIGHT and its transformation to its present form from Nelliyatt.
Here is something you might find interesting.
Superduper Legal Eagle
After Harvard and Washington, Poised and
Playful in Legal Fast Lane
By JAN HOFFMAN
or an overachiever, Preeta D. Bansal is unusually merry. That's the luxury of one whose mind is efficient as well as dazzling, so that by day's end, she can indeed skip out of the office. "There are day campers
and sleep-away campers," Ms. Bansal said, referring to dedication to work. "I've always been a day camper."
That even seems accurate, which is all the more remarkable, given that Ms. Bansal has moved from childhood in India, to girlhood in Lincoln, Neb., to her current position as New York State's Solicitor General -- with
pit stops at Harvard, the Supreme Court and the Clinton White House -- in
just 33 breathless years.
We caught up with her at her Upper West Side apartment, fresh from an
appearance last week before the Court of Appeals, New York's top court,
defending a law that withholds paychecks from legislators until they pass a
budget. As Solicitor General, appointed by Attorney General Eliot L.
Spitzer, she is the state's leading legal intellect, overseeing 40 lawyers and
representing New York in state and Federal appellate courts on issues
from constitutional interpretation to affirmative action.
Yet for someone who at the baby-lawyer age of 27 was coaching Stephen
G. Breyer, then a Federal appeals judge, on his testimony as the White
House nominee to the Supreme Court, Ms. Bansal comes across as
surprisingly relaxed, poised and playful. She frequently talks about "fun,"
not exactly the first word associated with someone who entered Harvard
at 16.
As a child, Ms. Bansal moved with her family to Lincoln, where her father
pursued a doctorate in civil engineering and her mother became a
gubernatorial adviser on social welfare and health care. "The only Indians I
knew in Nebraska were my siblings," she said. "There were no outlets for
feelings of difference, so I spent more of school years fitting in rather than
fitting apart."
Ms. Bansal was driven less by any specific career ambition than by the
quest to find a good parking space for her restless brilliance. (She has been
called a legal superstar, "smarter than the smart lawyers.") A nimble,
unorthodox thinker interested in art and literature, she was attracted to the
law's blend of the philosophical and the pragmatic.
Harvard Law School dismayed her. "It was stifling, narrow and more of a
professional school, with the gunning mentality," she said. "I didn't know
what all those students were looking for at the end of the rainbow." She
was seen as comparatively reluctant, the student who at the last moment
dashed off the best paper, whose professors cajoled her into joining Law
Review.
She clerked for James L. Oakes, then Chief Judge of the United States
Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and next entered law's
sanctum sanctorum, clerking on the Supreme Court, for Justice John Paul
Stevens. "I didn't realize what a privileged position it was until I came out,"
said Ms. Bansal, who had to be persuaded to apply.
"But it was a really fun year."
Highlights? "Spending two or three hours every day with Justice Stevens,"
she replied.
"I left at 6 P.M. to work out," she said. "I wasn't like the guys who lived
and breathed the Court, sending E-mails at 2 A.M. They couldn't figure me
out either." Tidbit: "Justice O'Connor invited the women clerks to her
regular aerobics class, and it was understood that one should go. Very low
impact."
MS. BANSAL joined the Washington office of Arnold & Porter, focusing
on First Amendment cases. Next stop, public service. At the Department
of Justice she rose in about five minutes to senior counsel, evaluating policy
about television violence and violence against women. She was borrowed
by the White House Counsel's office, where she toiled away on health
care task force litigation (major eye roll) and judicial nominations.
"I was surprised at how gritty it was," Ms. Bansal said. "It wasn't
high-minded legal analysis. It wasn't thoughtful. It was about how to
package a thoughtful person into a few-second sound bite."
She had a blast, having fallen in with international jet-setters from the
World Bank and diplomatic offices. She invested in a serious table that
seats 12 and gave weekly dinner parties, doing her own cooking. ("It's so
different in New York," she said. "People give fewer dinner parties and
they're completely catered!") She moved to Justice's antitrust division,
specializing in international enforcement of copyright laws.
She again grew restless. Washington felt too comfortable, her work too
theoretical.
She relocated to New York to practice with the First Amendment lawyer
Robert D. Sack, who has since become a Federal appeals judge.
After a rough adjustment, she's been having fun again. Dating is just fine
and she has a belief, based on her mother's example, that work and family
don't have to conflict. ("You think I'm na‹ve, right?") There is even a sense
of calm, following a "spiritual epiphany" while staring at the Piet….
"I realized I wasn't the center of my own universe and I stopped being my
own worst critic," Ms. Bansal said. "I understand life is not a trajectory
and I'm not in a waiting period. I stopped obsessing about where it was
leading and decided I couldn't figure it all out in advance."
So she allowed Spitzer to successfully pitch her the job of Solicitor General,
as a mixture of highbrow theory and real-world impact. It's the perfect
blend, for now. |
