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How not to raise legal ethics issues as to a candidate

How not to raise legal ethics issues as to a candidate

Starting with my post Elizabeth Warren’s law license problem last Monday and continuing through the week, I have laid out the facts and documents regarding Elizabeth Warren’s practice of law from her Cambridge office over the course of a decade.

I also have noted that Warren refuses to disclose the full extent of her practice, so what we know is limited to what we have been able to dig out of public records.   I wish we had more from the Warren campaign, but any additional facts almost certainly will make the situation worse for Warren as such facts will reveal more cases and more legal practice.

A number of critics have disagreed with my legal conclusions from these facts, although some of them are coming around to recognize the seriousness of Warren’s predicament.

But not a single critic has been able to show that any of the facts I presented are incorrect.  Nor could they, because I presented the documents.

Contrast my fact-based, document-driven presentation with the way in which Georgetown Law Professor Adam Levitin raised ethical issues with regard to Scott Brown’s practice of law at the Credit Slips blog, Did Scott Brown Facilitate Predatory Loans?

In that blog post, which has been linked and cited as authority by Huffington Post, Levitin suggested that Brown may have ethical problems, without presenting any evidence.

Instead, Levitin just threw out a bunch of questions wondering whether Brown facilitated predatory lending because one of the mortgage companies for which he did title work in local house closings owned a separate company which was accused of predatory lending.

That’s right, the only facts cited by Levitin were that Brown did title work for a company which itself did nothing wrong, but which owned a separate entity which allegedly did something wrong.  No facts were presented as to what Brown himself allegedly did wrong.

From that sparse and tangential (at best) relationship, Levitin wrote, in part (emphasis mine):

But at the very least, Brown’s association raises a host of questions. Who were those “mortgage companies” that he worked for?  It’s nice that Brown named a bunch of local banks, but I wonder what lies under the “mortgage company” label?  What did Scott Brown understand about the mortgage market he was facilitating? Did he recognize that there was a bubble?  (He was a town property assessor at one point, so one would think he’d notice this sort of thing.) If not, what does that say?  And if so, what does that say? How many predatory loans did Scott Brown facilitate?  How many of the loans where he handled the closing resulted in foreclosure?  What would he say to those families that lost their homes to predatory loans?

I suspect that Brown’s reply to these questions would be “Aw shucks, I’m just a guy with a pickup truck with 238,000 miles on it who was helping people out by doing the paperwork on their real estate closings.”  That’s not good enough. Either Brown was so inept that he didn’t see that the loans he was closing were becoming untenable or Brown saw the problem and didn’t do anything. As long as the music’s playing, the guy’s gotta earn a living, right?

I have highlighted the sentence in question because it suggests that loans Brown closed became “untenable” and that there were problems “Brown saw … and didn’t do anything” about.  Where is the evidence of that?  Where is the public record of loans Brown closed which were predatory?  Where is the evidence that such loans resulted in an inordinate number of foreclosures?

Levitin also doesn’t present any law as to how, assuming some of the loans Brown closed were “predatory,” Brown violated any ethical obligations by acting as the closing attorney.   Indeed, Levitin conceded there were no legal ethics issues:

Obviously as a legal matter, the attorney handling a real estate closing has no duty to shield people from making a bad business decision (particularly if he’s representing the bank).

There is no evidence and no law to suggest that Brown had ethical issues.  Instead, Levitin just threw out hypothetical questions which, by the way in which they were asked, presumed that Brown did something wrong.

From that, Levitin concluded:

At the very least, it looks like Scott Brown was riding the mortgage bubble, serving as a cog in the machine.

It is irresponsible law professor blog posts like Levitin’s which make it harder for serious issues, such as Warren’s law license problem, to be taken seriously.

When there are law professors who just throw ethical accusations with reckless abandon, it besmirches those of us who do take the time to present the evidence and the law, and to raise issues the mainstream media doesn’t understand or willfully ignores.

Update:  This is interesting:

“She expects a lot,” said Adam Levitin, a professor at Georgetown Law School who was a student of Warren’s at Harvard between 2002 and 2005. But, he said, Warren also gives a lot.

“She prepares assiduously and takes the teaching very seriously as part of her job. No one doesn’t think they’ve gotten their money’s worth out of the class,” Levitin said.

I’m sure if I dug deeper, I’d find more connection. But I’m too busy digging for facts as to Warren’s practice of law.

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Comments

Yeah, Prof. All true. But this guy is nothing but a moonbat with a law license.

I am restive over the whole “predatory loan” ambit. I think that term is more of the Collectivist’s masterful corruption of language.

Were there people who borrowed money without knowing what the hell they were doing? YES! And a lot of them did VERY WELL so long as the bubble was inflating.

People forget (conveniently) that Joe Sixpack did well “…riding the mortgage bubble, serving as a cog in the machine” so long as it was good times all around. A lot of people did very well flipping houses, and if you got out at the right time, you might be living in a house you own outright, fat and happy.

Brown had no duty to protect people from themselves. Levitin is just a slime-merchant.

    Have yet to see any incident, brought out in congressional or state hearings, where a now-defaulting borrower/s had the proverbial gun held to his/her/their head and told, “Sign these loan docs or else.”

    I am so sick and tired of supporting the irresponsible. And yeah, we can start with Mitt’s 47%.

    I agree with the criticism of the “predatory loan” shibboleth. An analogous criticism can be made regarding the now-untouchable concept of the unjustness of “preexisting conditions” as a basis for denying coverage to people who lied on their insurance applications. Both concepts are now “truths” in our society.

    98ZJUSMC in reply to Ragspierre. | September 29, 2012 at 1:12 pm

    Brown had no duty to protect people from themselves

    Why is something this simple, so difficult for so many people to understand?

    *arrrgh*

At the very least, it looks like Adam Levitin is riding the bias media bubble, serving as a cog in the machine.

Levitin’s conclusion could have been said about everyone who bought, built, sold, or worked in the housing industry during the bubble.

Liberals seem to have a problem with paying attention and doing their homework. The press is working overtime not in finding facts, but providing cover for “dog ate their homework” politicians.

    casualobserver in reply to Mich. | September 29, 2012 at 9:59 am

    It’s more than cover. I think many in the media/press seriously WANT to find bad things. Whether or not they follow any professional tactics to investigate, analyze, and present seems less important any more. Should we call it ‘Rathering’? I believe in the evil of a Dem opponent, therefore it is.

I don’t know Levitin and haven’t (won’t?) take the time to read through the Huffington Post work. But this seems normal if not expected. After all, the professional left in the country (elected class and their hires) and those who support them reflexively deal with most any factual circumstance with personal attacks. Here, couldn’t this just be a matter of someone sympathetic to Warren – either for political reasons or professional, in the practice of law – looking to cast aspersions on her opponent in retaliation or just as a contrast? To often in casual conversations with dedicated progressives I find the ‘discussion’ erodes all too quickly into some sort of direction you could summarize as, “Oh, yeah, but so-and-so is even worse…”

Could this just be a way of building a counteroffensive while giving ammunition – granted, apparently very shallow – to progressives who anxiously sling mud? News cycles are built on false conclusions and even known fallacies. You are always betting on what people will notice and remember. Why be accurate and analytical if you can get away with hypothetical postulations that slander and give you something to write about as a series for a while. Ten written negatives against one retraction is the norm, it seems.

    FX Phillips in reply to casualobserver. | September 29, 2012 at 10:46 am

    In the world of liberal commentators fabricated narratives and strained associations trump hard evidence and demonstrated facts.

    Tentative and speculative “guilt” by association of political opponents is worse than direct culpability by political cronies.

      casualobserver in reply to FX Phillips. | September 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm

      True. But if you dig to find a driver or drivers for such behavior it seems reasonable to think that it is more than just a ‘habit’, or such. Surely most who engage in such shallow practices are looking to tip the scales to the side of negative press as much as possible. This year seems to be the pinnacle. So many stories ignored. So many shallow, or unsourced, or illogically conceived pieces are out there with one common theme. Anyone associated with the GOP is bad – whether a misogynist (war on women) or elitist (war on middle class) or what have you. And such fabrications or distortions have amazing longevity until they are inevitably disproven. But, until then, there is an overwhelming amount of negative press. And guess what happens when you use a search engine? The bad comes up on top due to frequency of hits and amount of coverage.

      It’s not all one sided, but it surely seems overwhelmingly true against conservatives and especially anyone that can be associated with the Tea Party, even if remotely. For example, in MA, already there is press attempting to tie Scott Brown to Todd Akin. They aren’t even close in any way, however I expect that the week before the election you will likely find such articles and notations at the top (first page) of a search. The goal.

        FX Phillips in reply to casualobserver. | September 30, 2012 at 6:33 am

        The press are just democrats with by-lines.(Thanks professor Reynolds)

        Just read an article by Paul Kengor(via cmblake6’s weblog) which highlights just how long so called “progressives” have been retailing in this bad faith swill they concoct.

        They have corrupted the language and they have stepped over the line into a paranoid bad faith style of politics where the truth(such as it was) is forever banished and replaced by a relativistic narrative that changes and obscures facts to fit the agenda.

For the record:

Scott Brown graduated cum laude from Tufts: ranked #28 in top universities by US News and World report.

Elizabeth Warren graduated from the University of Houston, ranked #184 by US News and World Report. Can’t find anything about her graduating cum laude from there.

Law Schools:

Scott Brown got his law degree from Boston College, ranked #29 in top law schools by US News and World Report.

Elizabeth Warren got her law degree from Rutgers, ranked #82 by US News and World Report.

    MacsenMcBain in reply to Mercyneal. | September 29, 2012 at 10:03 am

    Hey- no fair! I went to Rutgers Law! So did famous graduates Lynne Stewart… Um… Sen. Robert Torricelli… aw, heck, never mind.

    Yet another reason to keep my diploma hidden in a file cabinet.

      Mercyneal in reply to MacsenMcBain. | September 29, 2012 at 10:08 am

      I didn’t mean to impugn Rutgers.

      I posted it because I am tired of liberal posters everywhere badmouthing Brown for being dumb, and for crowing about Warren being brilliant.

        she’s as brilliant as The One. They’re so brilliant that we mere peons are not permitted to see their actual grades.

          Valerie in reply to pfg. | September 29, 2012 at 11:38 am

          All the Democratic candidates are brilliant. And all the Republican candidates are dumb. Just like John F’n Kerry contrasted with George W. Bush. That’s their story, and they will stick to it, right up until the transcripts are eventually disclosed, after the election.

        MacsenMcBain in reply to Mercyneal. | September 29, 2012 at 12:39 pm

        No offense taken. I agree with Valerie, infra. As for me, smart is what smart does. I’ve never been quite convinced by the myth of Obama’s (or Kerry’s, or Gore’s, or Clinton’s, etc.) intelligence.

    FinbarOS in reply to Mercyneal. | September 29, 2012 at 10:35 am

    Every law school in the country has someone who graduated at the bottom of their class in any given year. Their diplomas read the same as everyone else’s.

legacyrepublican | September 29, 2012 at 9:51 am

The east coast, particularly the thirteen original colonies, uses lawyers to do mundane title work about the chain of title, the property’s description, etc.

It is not glamorous or sexy work.

But without lawyers like Scott Brown, hard working, middle class, everyday people living there would not be able to sell or buy property let alone get loans.

So, I would respond by contrasting his client list benefited against Ms. Warren’s client list.

Oh, and I might go on to add that Scott Brown did it with a genuine law license too.

Hey, Levitin opened the door, so slam it in her face.

Professor, check out the lead editorial in today’s WSJ! Looks like someone on the board has been reading LI!

You have done a stellar job on the Warren issue, it is a shame they didn’t give you the credit for unearthing her litigious background.

At Letivin’s authoritative analysis, title attorneys across the nation remain embarrassed and silent. If this is what passes for intellectual rigor at Georgetown, the Jesuits should be concerned.

Could Levitin’s NAMBLA membership be an ethical problem?

George Kaplan WBNW | September 29, 2012 at 10:28 am

The pathetic article by “Prof.” Levitin is strategic. It’s purpose is to give the Warren campaign and the MSNBC’s, Boston Globe’s of the world something to hang their hat on as they attempt to combat the real and serious accusations raised by Prof. Jacobson.

Other examples of the same strategy are:

Warren is 1/32nd Cherokee because her great great great great … grandmother was Cherokee. But her great … grandmother was never a Cherokee and Warren is exactly 0/32nds Cherokee. Regardless, the 1/32nd stuck and now people -including conservatives- use that number thinking they are making fun of her although instead it gives Warren some form credibility.

Michael Fredrickson, NONE OTHER THAN THE General Counsel of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers giving an interview to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in which he appears to exonerate Warren of any wrongdoing. Defenders (99% of the media) instantly picked it up and the real story is presented in the media as “nothing to see here move along”, “asked and answered”, “old news, that story has been debunked”. It takes someone like Prof. Jacobson to ask the right questions from Fredrickson to get to the truth but by that time it is too late the fake exoneration is given as much weight as the truth.

Professor: You present a walk in closet full of garments of questionable pedigree. All an enabler like Levitin has to do is pound a nail of equivalant rationalization in the wall for dems to hang their coat of nonexistant ethics from.

Levintin is trying successfully to use “smoke and mirrors” to push the emphasis away from Warren’s illegal law practice.

Elizabeth Warren is listed among the “past regular contributors” at the Credit Slips Blog where Levitin posts.

Here’s Obama…TODAY…working on re-inflating the housing bubble…

“Hello, everybody. Four years ago this month, a crisis that started out on Wall Street almost brought down our entire economy. The nation’s biggest banks were days away from failing. The stock market – and millions of American retirement accounts – were in free-fall. Credit froze. Lending stopped. And businesses large and small didn’t even know if they’d be able to make payroll. It was a moment the likes of which few Americans had ever seen.

Today, we know the biggest cause of that crisis was reckless behavior in the housing market.

Millions of Americans who did the right and responsible thing – who shopped for a home, secured a mortgage they could afford, and made their payments on time – were badly hurt by the irresponsible actions of others. By lenders who sold loans to families who couldn’t afford them – and buyers who knew they couldn’t afford them. By speculators who were looking to make a quick buck. And by banks that packaged and sold those risky mortgages for phony profits.

When the party stopped, and the housing bubble burst, it pushed our entire economy into a historic recession – and left middle-class families holding the bag.”

And…as King Chutzpa…he calls out Congress for being lazy and CAMPAIGNING.

Seriously.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/29/weekly-address-it-s-time-congress-help-responsible-homeowners

    VetHusbandFather in reply to Ragspierre. | September 29, 2012 at 11:57 am

    And let us not forget this:

    http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/03/with-landmark-lawsuit-barack-obama-pushed-banks-to-give-subprime-loans-to-chicagos-african-americans/

    Professor Levitin may want to bring up some ethics charges against the President while he’s at it.

      As a general rule, I am skeptical of criticizing a lawyer for the legal or ideological position of his client, but in cases such as this, one can comfortably assume that Attorney Obama was fully sympatico with his clients’ position.

        VetHusbandFather in reply to Sneaky Pete. | September 29, 2012 at 4:31 pm

        You know, you make a good point and I agree with you in some ways and I don’t in others. Take a more extreme example of defending something that is clearly wrong (e.g. Rape or Murder). In those cases its hardly fair to say that the defense lawyers agree with rape/murder… and yet at the same time, if I was a lawyer I’d have trouble defending someone in those cases unless I was absolutely sure of their innocence.

          Sneaky Pete in reply to VetHusbandFather. | September 29, 2012 at 4:47 pm

          Well that’s fine, but I’ve yet to meet a criminal defense lawyer who believes philosophically in murder and rape. All they believe in is the Constitutional right to a vigorous defense.

          I suppose there are a few, but I doubt there are a lot of successful criminal defense lawyers out there who don’t take cases unless they’re convinced of their client’s innocence.

          Personally, I would be inclined to defend Ms. Warren’s work on behalf of Big Business, if she wasn’t so duplicitous and two-faced about it. If she simple said, “I am a lawyer, and we sometime represent clients we don’t agree with,” I wouldn’t fault her for that. I do fault her for claiming her work was ON THE LITTLE MAN’s side, when it clearly wasn’t. (And obviously doing it unlicensed.)

      ahhh……er…….ummm……ahhhh…

      That’s raaaaaaaacist!

      /liberal

Political Observer | September 29, 2012 at 11:48 am

By Professor Levitin’s own reasoning is he complicant in the defrauding of law students who are paying outragous sums of money for credentials in which there are no jobs?

NC Mountain Girl | September 29, 2012 at 12:25 pm

Last year I would have said that Georgetown law students are lucky this charlatan doesn’t teach Evidence. Considering the example we’ve had of the caliber of the student body at Georgetown, I suspect it no longer matters. Georgetown seems to be a place one goes to preen and posture rather than to learn.

One has to wonder if Letivin really believes what he is saying, or is in that class of people that Princeton Philosophy Professor Harry Frankfurter wrote about in this seminal essay:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html

Eeeeewwwwww! Yuck!

The Honey Badger is doing the tomahawk chop on that fake Indian and that lesser Georgetown law professor.

That is disgusting! Honey Badger doesn’t give a sh*t!! He just bites their heads right off!

Actually, it was Obama who, as a lawyer, as a community organizer, facilitated predatory loans to individuals without means, without prospects, and without an interest to integrity.

Unfortunately, Obama did not change when he became a politician. He, along with others of his ilk, campaign on the false promise of instant gratification (i.e. physical, material, ego) without consequences. Their deception has engendered evolutionary dysfunction; a covert regressive and progressive tax on every American and others who denominate their debt in dollars or who peg their currency to the dollar; and sabotaged character development.

Obama is the slumlord president.

Annoying columnist for the Boston Phoenix answers a reader’s question about the law license issue:

http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/talkingpolitics/archive/2012/09/28/q-amp-a-6-e-dubs-law-license.aspx

Q&A #6: E-Dubs Law License

Published Sep 28 2012, 02:43 PM by David S. Bernstein3
“Rob” asks:

Do you think there is any seriousness to the allegations around Elizabeth Warren’s law license? Or will it only have an effect in the right-wing blogosphere?

Seems to me that, at the very worst, assuming anything about this story is really anything, you’ve got somebody who is clearly doing work she is perfectly qualified to do, for clients who are very happy to pay for her expertise, but may have skirted laws concerning the proper state licensure for doing such work in quite the way she was doing it.

Right?

So, let the wallowers hunt and chase this down; they may have legitimately caught her failing to cross some i’s or dot some t’s, or versa-vica, or whatever, and good for them. But if we’re playing “(Big) Deal Or No (Big) Deal,” I’m going with No (Big) Deal.

Jack The Ripper | September 29, 2012 at 11:35 pm

Summary:
1) Although Adam Levitin is heavily involved with Elizabeth Warren, it does not appear that he is involved with NAMBLA. I assume that the post above was a cheeky play on predatory (as in lending) versus predator (as in NAMBLA). Adam Levitin does not appear to be the male or the female by the same last name who are involved with some “sexual” debates.
2) Levitin is being very disingenuous in his use of the word “facilitate”
3) Levitin might not understand how truly small the role of title attorneys and closing attorneys is in predatory lending relative to all the other participants
4) Levitin glosses over for whom the title work and closing are being done
5) Even if a loan is predatory, title work benefits the borrower
6) Unlike Elizabeth Warren’s legal work, Scott Brown’s work certainly helped more “little guys” than it “facilitated” the harm of “little guys.”
7) Unlike Elizabeth Warren’s legal work, in which it was clear who the client was and what they were asking her to do, Levitin seeks to link Scott Brown to entities that were somehow involved in the “clients” that Levitin names.
8) By Levitin’s logic, Elizabeth Warren and host of other people who might be fans of her would need to face the severest opprobrium.

Adam Levitin just did the Brown campaign and HUGE favor and Professor Warren a huge disservice.

Wait until you see the link below.

Levitin was a student of Professor Warren’s at Harvard Law School, is involved with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and supposedly gave money to her campaign.

Levitin uses the word “facilitate” in a very disingenuous manner and is even being called out by comments on his own blog.

Levitin is also trying to buttress the case that Scott Brown is on the side of Wall Street and Big Oil, etc., against the little people.

But, by Levitin’s own logic, not only did Elizabeth Warren intentionally advocate against asbestos claimants, Elizabeth Warren tried to deprive thousands of coal miners (and unionized ones at that) of health care benefits.
Warren’s work was not on the side of the little guy. She did it by signing up for a client with the explicit and limited objective of getting those health benefits terminated, whereas Brown’s work running titles and closing loans helped borrowers who needed money get financing.
Issuing credit to shaky borrowers is the very premise of Obama’s legal work in the lawsuit mentioned above, as well as the Community Reinvestment Act. That is why Angelo Mozillo and so many others donated so lopsidedly to Democrats vis-à-vis Republicans.

Levitin implies that Scott Brown should have seen that some of the loans were eroding. Why? Running titles before a loan is closed has very little to do with what happens after the closing.

Levitin seems to be confusing title work with loan origination and loan servicing, which would have a lot more to do with any predatory behavior than even being the closing attorney (which Levitin admits would not be responsible for predatory lending when he writes:

“Obviously as a legal matter, the attorney handling a real estate closing has no duty to shield people from making a bad business decision (particularly if he’s representing the bank).”).

Somehow, Levitin seems to be bollixing up the pecking order of all of the following participants:

The borrower, the lender, the loan originator, the loan servicer, the appraiser, the home inspector, the listing agent (who helps set price), the closing agent, the closing attorney, and the person who merely runs the title to make sure that the bank does not “close over” anything of record that should be paid off at the closing table (and which implicitly benefits the borrower with clean title, even if the title search is paid for by the lender and the borrower declines to purchase title insurance at closing).

And none of that comes close to the overall environment, such as lenders being able to offload risky loans to GSE’s like Freddie and Fannie, which the Bush Administration warned, in its first term, had systemic portfolio issues, but which were shielded by Representative Frank of Massachusetts (who had a close friend making a lot of money at one of them) and Senator Dodd of Connecticut. It ignores the Community Reinvestment Act. It ignores Community Organizer and activist attorney Barack H. Obama’s involvement in litigation about lending to marginal borrowers.

[You do realize that the biggest FINANCIAL PLUM a political appointee can get is beinng at the apex of the FANNIE and FREDDIE organizations. Big, big bucks. Bigger than most “Wall Street” bonuses. See, Gorelick, Jamie and Raines, Franklin, and Frank, Barney, friend of].

Google: jamie gorelick fannie mae bonus
Google: franklin raines fannie mae
Google: rahm emanuel freddie mac

Check out: http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin/your-guide-to-sleazy-democratic-party-backed-banks.html

Professor Warren was right. The system is rigged against the little guy. But, it is Professor Warren and her fellow travelers who are doing some of the worst rigging (while claiming to be for the people they are harming).
This should come as no surprise. You see, the individual is not the focus of collectivist politics and policies. Democrats are for Big Labor, Big Government, and, yes, go look at the donations, Big Business. Elizabeth Warren is squarely in that camp (except she will defect from Big Labor when there are legal fees to be had and she will rail against Big Business despite working for Big Business and taking campaign contributions – in addition to legal fees – from Big Business).
Elizabeth Warren does not view people as individuals, but as members of collective groups based on race, gender, ethnicity, etc. And, don’t deny it, because she certainly views herself that way, to wit, a “woman of color.”
She also views herself as an elite and a Chief Architect / Grand Architect of society and commerce. Elizabeth Warren is not just a statist, she is a stasist statist, stuck in an era of Big Government, Big Labor, Big Business, and groupthink. She does not believe in the individual. She does not believe in individual achievement (her remarks about you did not build that preceded those of the President). She does not seem to believe in income mobility.
Scott Brown facilitated a lot of little guys getting loans. Some of them may not have worked out, a lot did, and even more would have, had liquidity and low interest rates in the aftermath of 9/11 not caused a real estate bubble that would have hurt even “traditional borrowers,” but then became systemic because of the policies mentioned above, along with BASEL and Tier 1 capital structures, etc.

Jack The Ripper | September 30, 2012 at 12:19 am

According to campaign finance disclosure reports filed by the Elizabeth Warren campaign for U.S Senate, FEC records that appear to trail by a month or so show the following election campaign contributions to Professor Warren:

LEVITIN, ADAM
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
PROFESSOR
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL/PROFESSOR
BROOKLINE
MA
02446
8/11/2012
$250

LEVITIN, ADAM
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
PROFESSOR
CHEVY CHASE
MD
20815
9/13/2011
$250

LEVITIN, SARAH
N/A
HOMEMAKER
CHEVY CHASE
MD
20815
12/7/2011
$25

LEVITIN, SARAH
N/A
HOMEMAKER
CHEVY CHASE
MD
20815
9/13/2011
$250

LEVITIN, SUSAN
NONE
NOT EMPLOYED
BROOKLINE
MA
02446
8/11/2012
$250

In addition to these contributions, one might guess that law school professor Adam Levitin of Georgetown University, was not just a student of Professor Elizabeth Warren’s at Harvard Law School, but also a colleague of Professor Warren’s at Harvard Law School, along with the Consumer Finance Protection Commission overlap.

    1. Interesting. Although his blog bio does not specify it, Levitin indeed is on leave from Georgetown at Harvard. He will teach Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganizations, and Consumer Finance. Sounds like he’s filling in for Warren.

    2. If Warren is elected, Levitin seems extremely well positioned to step into her faculty position. The support of a Massachusetts Senator with a strong Harvard affiliation would count a lot.

    3. Despite Levitin’s connections with Warren, his anti-Brown blog post does not mention her name. I wonder how much of a role Warren has played in Levitin’s career via letters of recommendation, lobbying, etc.

    4. I would ask Levitin about that via a cross-post to Credit Slips, but, gee whiz, he has closed comments.

    5. OT: I scanned that list of visiting faculty. If indeed those positions amount to extended interviews, HLS remains extremely interested in candidates like 1/32 Cherokee females.

      gs in reply to gs. | September 30, 2012 at 9:26 am

      6. In view of Levitin’s relationship to Warren, the question arises whether he made his post on his own initiative or with the knowledge of the Warren campaign.