William Rehnquist graduated first in his class at Stanford Law; Sandra Day O'Connor graduated third in the same class. Who was number 2? Dana Mulhauser has this article at TNR Online about her failed attempt to figure out who it was. Meanwhile, Gordon Smith announces (sans explanation) that it was one David Salisbury. I don't know how Mr Smith found out, but assuming he is right, maybe Ms. Mulhauser would have done well to plumb the blogosphere for information.

UPDATE: Mr. Salisbury himself half-denies the rumors, and suggests that it is simply unknown, as Ms. Mulhauser originally suggested.

Matthew Yglesias has a Prospect Column up championing (unsurprisingly, given the circumstances) the virtues of Stare Decisis on the Supreme Court. Because he does not go into many details other than to criticize Clarence Thomas, it is unclear whether he means his doctrine to be applied evenhandedly or only opportunistically. (What does he make of the resolute tone of the liberal dissenters in the vouchers cases, the sovereign immunity cases, and the enumerated-powers cases, suggesting that they will overrule them as soon as they get a fifth vote? E.g.: "My own course as a judge on the Court cannot, however, simply be to hope that the political branches will save us from the consequences of the majority’s decision. ... I hope that a future Court will reconsider today’s dramatic departure from basic Establishment Clause principle.") Presumably Yglesias thinks that both Casey and Zelman ought to be here to stay.

[I happen to think Yglesias's claim that "The only way to give real sense to the claim that standing by settled doctrines would be compounding a mistake would be to view the mistakes of the past as policy ones." is profoundly wrong. Assuming a separation between "policy" and "legal" decisions then exacerbating and extending decisions that are wrong, decisions that declare things that are contrary to, e.g., the U.S. Constitution is surely "compounding a mistake". Plessy and Brown and Browder are the obvious citation here, but for good reason. If not that, maybe Swift and Erie.]

Anyway, I was most struck, though, by this part of Yglesias's column:

When an issue is litigated for the first time, the best way to preserve [the rule of law] is to do the best one can to stick to the original understanding of what the law said. When a law or amendment is passed, people form expectations about what the consequences will be, and severe departures from the original understanding upset those expectations. This is bad, and it detracts from the purpose of having laws and courts in the first place . . .