Yale Law '90: Kathleen Clark

As I promised last week, I'm going to take every Wednesday to explore the career paths of some of my law school classmates, a particularly interesting bunch.

For my first profile, I've selected Kathleen Clark, a law professor and expert on government, ethics, and national security. When we were in law school, Kathleen was kind to me when I was clueless, something I have always been grateful for. She was one of the sharpest people in the group, and when she raised her hand you knew something compelling and true was about to be said.  She was a double Yalie-- undergrad and law school-- so she knew her way around, too. I've been lucky enough to see her occasionally since school, too, most recently when she was kind enough to come hear Nkechi Taifa and I talk about reparations with Dr. Joanne Braxton earlier this month.

After law school, Kathleen clerked for Judge Harold Greene, and then served as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a professor, she got tenure at Washington University in St. Louis, and has also taught at Cornell, Michigan, Utrecht University, and the National University of Vietnam.

One of Kathleen's great gifts is to take complicated ethical issues and explain them with both clarity and moral purpose. That's one reason that her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post and many other publications, challenging the powerful with principle. More than once, I've been watching television and Kathleen has appeared, making sense with simple and irrefutable points. I stifle the urge to point and say "I know her!" excitedly when this happens at the gym. She is actually able to explain things like the Emoluments Clause, and has been a leading voice on that and other issues. Here is a sample of her making sense of our current world:



In a nation with a critical need for experts in government ethics, we all are lucky to have Kathleen amongst us.