Chicago-Kent Law Review Volume 87 Issue 2 Women's Legal History: A Global Article 13 Perspective April 2012 Portia's Deal Karen M. Tani Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview Part of the Law and Gender Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Karen M. Tani, Portia's Deal, 87 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 549 (2012). Available at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol87/iss2/13 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chicago-Kent Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. PORTIA'S DEAL KAREN M. TANI* INTRODUCTION The years of the New Deal were heady times for lawyers in the federal government. According to participant-observers, young "legal eagles" swooped down on Washington, D.C., from elite law schools, often at the beckoning of Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter. There, they drafted groundbreaking statutes and codes, executed am- bitious regulatory programs, and defended historic reform legislation against a hostile Supreme Court. "[G]overnment gave a young lawyer responsibility that was tenfold above what he would receive outside," recalled one such lawyer. Many lawyers recalled an esprit de corps. It followed from long hours spent tackling the same problems, but also from attending the same parties, rooming in the same houses, and rec- ognizing themselves as a "counter-elite" to the bar's more corporate- oriented leadership.