ABSTRACT
It happened in the first six months of his administration. President Clinton had nominated someone for high public office whose name he would subsequently have to withdraw. This time it was Lani Guinier. What an embarrassment, a political blunder of the first order! How could a president and his staff recruit a well-known law professor and personal friend to a sensitive position in the Justice Department without knowing her position on key issues? Had they not read her widely disseminated articles from prestigious law reviews? Had they ever bothered to speak with her? Perhaps they had just miscalculated the receptivity of the U.S. Senate.
