by Hannah Saraf
Lauren Moxley Beatty is Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, where she works for Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut. Prior to the Senate, Lauren was an associate at Covington, a law firm in Washington D.C., where she practiced appellate litigation and focused on privacy and technology issues. Lauren is the creator, producer, and host of the Ginsburg Tapes, a podcast analyzing Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, in which Ginsburg brought constitutional challenges to laws differentiating on the basis of sex. Lauren is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School.
What were you like in high school? Were you already interested in the law?
I grew up in Tampa, Florida, where I went to King High School, go Lions. King is a big public high school, and it has an International Baccalaureate program that was really rigorous. The IB program was life-changing for me. Beyond just the content, I learned how to work hard, how to work all the time. In high school, I fell in love with running and was on the cross country and track teams. I was also on the debate team — like a lot of the people that you interview probably were! I did public forum debate, which is kind of like Lincoln Douglas, but instead of focusing on issues of philosophy, you focus on policy issues, and you have a partner. We were kind of scrappy, we didn’t really have a coach, and a friend who is two grades above me — who I’m still in touch with — taught me the ropes.
Were there any teachers for you that served as big mentors or role models, either in high school or college or law school?
I’ve had some terrific teachers. I think it actually goes back to middle school, and my history teacher Ms. Turner. She told me that I would become a historian, maybe because I so obviously loved her class, and she made me feel like I had something to contribute. I also had a memorable history teacher in high school, Mr. Brown, who delivered these terrific, dense, organized lectures to us like we were in college. Mr. Brown used to tell me that I could never go to law school because my handwriting was so bad when I was taking lecture notes. Luckily, by the time I went to law school, we used our laptops. Handwriting has unfortunately now become relevant for me again, as I have to handwrite notes to the Senator I work for sometimes.
In college, I had a favorite professor for international relations, Professor Grieco, and his class blew the world open for me. I worked for him for a few years on a project on nuclear bellicosity — basically analyzing whether the acquisition of nuclear power makes a state more or less bellicose. The results were that states do not necessarily become more bellicose after acquiring nuclear weapons. I also had a terrific journalism professor, Sarah Cohen, and I loved her classes because she was so deeply passionate about her craft, about the importance of investigative reporting. In law school, David Barron (who is now a judge) was my 1L legislation and regulation professor, and things just clicked for me in that class. I learned a lot from him, and I worked as a research assistant for him too, also analyzing wartime but in the context of the relationship between Congress and the President in waging war. Also, Cass Sunstein: I loved his administrative law class, and I would basically transcribe what he said in class and read it back afterward because it was hard to process all his insights in real-time.
Who or what made you want to be a lawyer? Or study law?
I’m tempted to turn the questions back to you because I’m curious about what makes you want to be a lawyer at a young age! Honestly, my early childhood was kind of all about sports. I was always kind of traveling around. I did a lot of gymnastics, and eventually, I started traveling to a gym that was kind of far away, and we were carpooling. The folks that we were carpooling with would play NPR in the car. Eventually, I started to notice that I was more excited to listen to NPR in the car rides than to go to gymnastics. Also, I was a terrible gymnast. But those NPR carpool rides were just before high school, so I think by the time I got to high school and wanted to do debate and started being more political, it was informed by that experience.
The other “lightbulb moment” for me was when I went to this one-week summer program at Georgetown on international politics when I was a junior in high school. I had found it online and I remember advocating hard to go to it because it was really expensive, and my parents now joke that it was indeed the most expensive week of anyone’s life because it put me on a trajectory that ultimately led to Duke and HLS. At that program, I was surrounded by people who were just so engaged in the world. I came back home wanting to go to a good school like all those kids were talking about, to challenge myself academically, and to try to use all of that education to make some sort of difference with this life.
During law school — this is jumping ahead a little bit — you were a senior editor for Harvard Law’s National Security Journal. Why were you interested in national security law then? And how has that interest weaved its way into your career currently?
The summer before my senior year, I worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, which is a consulting firm that does a lot of government contracting. It was two years before Edward Snowden’s disclosures. Through that job, I was exposed to ongoing cyber threats. I came away from the experience thinking about how the future of war, the future of how states relate to one another, would be shaped by cyber. I started law school the next year and was eager to learn more. For four years after law school, I was at a law firm in DC, and one of my focuses was on electronic surveillance and law enforcement access to data — issues with surveillance that arise in the criminal and national security contexts, which I found fascinating.
You hit on this a little bit, but you did a clerkship on the Second Circuit. How much did you write during your clerkship? And how did your writing improve during that time?
I had an appellate clerkship, and you write all day. People say that appellate work can be monastic, and I think that’s often the right word for it. It’s a lot of reading and writing, and it lends to less interrupted time than a lot of other types of legal work. I think that I learned more in that one clerkship year of research and writing than I probably did in all three years of law school. I worked for Judge Wesley on the Second Circuit, and he also is just such a kind person and boss; he creates a familial, team atmosphere in his chambers, where you can bring your full self to work.
This is kind of connected to the interpersonal relationships of a clerkship. How did you find a balance between being deferential to the judge and also being assertive enough to make your case during the clerkship? That seems like a really tricky line to walk, and I’m curious how you did it.
It depends a little bit on the atmosphere of the chambers of the judge that you work for, and the judge’s expectations. Judge Wesley is full of witticisms. When he needed to, he would point to his commission on the wall and just say, “I have the commission.” At the end of the day, as a law clerk, it’s really important to have the intellectual humility to know that you’re brand new to this, you were not the person appointed by the President, and that you’re ultimately serving a principal. Within that ambit, you have a responsibility and a role to play in recommending how you think a case should be decided and what you think is the best legal reasoning. Not just in the law clerk setting, but throughout your legal career, including as a junior attorney, I also think there’s an under-appreciated power in being the first drafter of any legal document — you shape its course, even if it changes a lot along the way.
Your work in the law has heavily intersected with politics, especially now. How do you feel law and politics intersect?
Courts play a role in our political system. And politicians, of course, shape the makeup of the courts through judicial appointments.
From the perspective of litigation and the courts, how “political” a case is comes in shades of grey, and it depends on what type of law you are practicing, it depends on the case, it depends on your perspective as to what issues are “political”: is it just election law, or is it any legal issue that implicates divisive political issues? I was at the law firm during the Trump administration. I did litigation in my pro bono practice that directly challenged administration policies in the courts. I helped teams representing people challenging the legality and constitutionality of the Trump administration’s policies, like the travel ban and the ban on transgender service in the military. I wrote an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop. That pro bono work felt more political than cases that I’d work on for billable clients, but that’s not to say those were always separate and apart from politics in the broad sense of the word.
My current job at the Senate sits squarely at the intersection of law, policy, and politics. A legislative attorney uses legal reasoning every day, but not in the same way as a popular imagination of a lawyer does, making arguments in court before a judge. A legislative lawyer advises about legal issues inherent in current events and legislative business, helps draft and move legislation, helps draft speeches, and staffs members of Congress at hearings.
For people who want to learn more about it, since you’ve done a lot of amicus brief drafting, would you like to explain what an amicus brief is?
Sure! So, in litigation, you often have two parties: you have a plaintiff and a defendant (or on appeal an appellate and appellee or petitioner and respondent). The parties submit a briefing to the court to argue their case as to why under the facts in the law, they should win. Those briefs help inform the court’s decision. Amicus briefs sit separate and apart from that core briefing by the parties. Amicus curiae is Latin for “friend of the Court” and amicus parties weigh in as friends, as outsiders, to an underlying dispute when they have an interest in a matter and they can provide additional material to the court that should help the court’s decision. Amicus briefs are most effective when they’re making new arguments and presenting new material, not when they’re just rehashing arguments that have already been played out by the parties. In the law firm setting at least, pro bono amicus briefs can be a great way to get writing experience early on in your career.
You drafted three Supreme Court amicus briefs and one of them was pretty major, for Masterpiece Cakeshop. What was that experience like, and what did you learn?
I drafted that brief when I was pretty junior at the law firm, I think it was the first time I got to be a lead drafter on a brief, and I was really excited about it. We wrote it on behalf of the National Women’s Law Center and 39 other women’s groups, and they were trying to show how, if the baker was able to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, the reasoning might affect other laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
You were lead counsel for Generation Ratify, which is a really cool movement. I wanted to ask why you felt called to do that and what you learned from that experience?
I’ve been thinking about Generation Ratify since we’ve been chatting because they remind me of you and the talented young writers at High School SCOTUS. The leaders at GenRatify are extremely bright and engaged young people. The opportunity to work with them on that brief came right on the heels of doing a lot of reading about the Equal Rights Amendment in working on Ginsburg Tapes. The current status of the ERA is that in 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to vote in favor of the amendment, but there are some constitutional issues that are still outstanding, namely whether the shot clock has passed for ratifying the amendment and whether states are permitted to rescind their ratifications of a constitutional amendment after they’ve voted on it. And so the case is working its way through the courts.
While the case was in the district court, Generation Ratify wanted to weigh in on the case and have their voices heard. The amicus brief focused on the ways in which young people have been involved in the movement for the ERA since the beginning, and it also focused on the way making the Equal Rights Amendment part of the Constitution today could impact young people.
Now, I really want to talk about The Ginsburg Tapes because I’ve been reigning myself in, but I really want to talk about it now. The Ginsburg Tapes focus on Justice Ginsburg, particularly her oral arguments before the court in the 1970s-ish. You talk about lots of her famous cases, and then some of her less well-known cases. Why did you choose to start the podcast?
You said that you listen to judiciary committee hearings sometimes before school, and I was kind of doing the same thing as you. I was listening to oral arguments when I was walking to work or in between tasks. I was practicing appellate law at the time, and I wanted to improve my skills. The Oyez website has Supreme Court oral arguments going back to 1955. I started listening to Ginsburg’s arguments from when she was appearing before the Court as an attorney for the ACLU, advocating for a home for women in the Constitution. It was during this cultural moment where Ginsburg was just so wildly popular, almost overly symbolized, on street lamps and tote bags all over DC where I live. I’m listening to these tapes, and it strikes me that “people are going to want to hear this.”
But as you know, since you were saying that you listen to oral arguments sometimes, Supreme Court oral arguments are not always the most digestible. And so I thought I’d take these tapes that people are going to be interested in — because people are interested in her — and I’ll try to break it down so that we can learn not just about her, but about how the Supreme Court works, how constitutional law functions, how constitutional law can change. So my overall goal was to try to help demystify those opaque topics.
Well, then I guess that begs the question, what did you learn? What was your biggest lesson?
Understanding the history and the human stories behind a unified set of Supreme Court decisions helped me understand how constitutional law develops in the courts. Ginsburg’s oral arguments were all on a single topic: whether the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses apply to prohibit discrimination based on sex.
On its face, the Constitution largely does not recognize women — as in women’s existence. Seriously, the only time the word “she” came up at the Constitutional Convention was in the context of fugitive slaves. The only explicit reference to women in the Constitution is the 19th Amendment, which is the right to vote. But Ginsburg was trying to correct that by convincing the Supreme Court to recognize that the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War, protects against discrimination on the basis of sex. She was ultimately successful in convincing the Court on this point, and she did it by attacking laws codifying “benevolent sexist” notions — laws that gave women some special benefit or tax exemption or exemption from the duty to serve on juries, purportedly to benefit her but in reality because of some notion of women’s inferiority. Case by case, she inches the justices along, and ultimately the conservative Burger court announces a heightened scrutiny standard that remains the law today. It wasn’t without its failures — their efforts fell short of strict scrutiny, which was the goal, and the time period saw a backslide in the popularity of the ERA.
And Ginsburg has a particular argument style, but in the end, it was effective. She never took the bait when the justices were condescending or disrespectful to her. In her last oral argument, Justice Rehnquist asked her if she’d settle for putting Susan B. Anthony on the dollar coin. You know, instead of having equal rights under the Constitution on the basis of sex. She apparently wanted to say, “we won’t settle for tokens,” but she bit her tongue. I still named that episode, “We won’t settle for tokens.” I think it captures the spirit of her strategy.
One really memorable episode for me on the podcast was the one where you focused on a case in which Ginsburg lost. I wanted to ask why you chose to focus on her failure in this case, because obviously, she won a lot of cases, so you could have chosen to skip it if you’d wanted to. And what did focusing on that case teach you?
I wanted to cover all of Ginsburg’s oral arguments, and I wasn’t really tempted to skip Kahn v. Shevin, her only loss. It is an important piece of the overall arch of the effort, and of course, there is learning in failure. The case was a surprise to Ginsburg — an ACLU affiliate in Florida had brought this case originally, and she only found out after the Supreme Court was granted review, and I think she knew it was going to be an uphill battle. It is about a property tax exemption that applies to female widows, but not to male widowers. In her first case, Frontiero, the Court had already declined to set a new standard for or even apply strict scrutiny to laws that differentiate on basis of sex. And in Kahn, the Court went 6-3, I believe, and Justice Douglas wrote the opinion. You might remember this, but Douglas’s personal history might have influenced him here. He grew up with a single mom who worked incredibly hard; he had to put his way through college. And it was probably hard for him to strike down this law that would have taken away a property tax exemption for widows.
To the extent that you can tell me, what’s been the biggest learning experience from your job currently?
The biggest learning experience has probably been translating my legal skills from the litigation setting to the legislative setting. I really enjoyed litigation. But I was always curious about working more directly at the intersection of law and policy – like we were talking about before. Particularly coming out of the Trump administration, I was really eager to get involved, to use whatever skills I’ve built up towards serving the public in some way following those devastating years. In pure legal practice, you’re often waking up in the morning thinking about what the law is; in the law-and-policy world, you get to wake up in the morning and think about what the law should be, asking how things can be better. I’m a counsel in Senator Blumenthal’s office, and I work on his Senate Judiciary Committee portfolio. The issues the Committee covers are broad, and the work is always interesting.
I feel like we’ve hit on this a little bit, but I have a big final question. Why do you think that young people should pay attention to the courts and engage in law? Are there any specific areas that you feel like it’s important for students to focus on?
Thank you for having me on. I find it extremely energizing to chat with you. It’s really wonderful to hear from young people, like you, who are just so engaged with the world around them. Your generation will be the most affected by who’s in power now, whether we’re talking about the courts, Congress, the presidency, or outside of government. Given that this is High School SCOTUS and you guys are focused on the Court, there is a tremendous range of issues working their way through the Court and the courts that will affect your experiences through your lives — the environment, reproductive rights, criminal law and policing, the privacy crisis. When you understand how government works, how to engage as a citizen, I think that you can fight for the world that you want to live in. You can hold institutions accountable. It’s good for everyone when young people are engaged.
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