Georgetown Law Alumni Magazine - Res Ipsa Loquitur
Spring/Summer 2009 - Online Volume 1
Lectures and Events
Starr Receives Federalist Award
On February 5, Kenneth Starr — a former federal judge, the current dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law and the man who served as independent counsel in the Whitewater and Lewinsky matters — received the Georgetown Federalist Society’s sixth annual award for lifetime service. Dean Alex Aleinikoff called the former solicitor general an extraordinary Supreme Court advocate. “His service has not been without controversy, but my guess is that [he] would think that a life without controversy is a life of complacency,” the dean said.
Starr’s brief remarks focused on the Supreme Court of former Chief Justice Earl Warren, which, in the 1961 case of Mapp v. Ohio, extended the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule to the states. The rule, which holds that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible in a criminal trial, was actually used as a tool to help clean up police departments in the country, Starr noted. And this power of the Court to effect progress has remained an issue ever since. “My point … is a neutral observation that we are continuing to meditate almost daily in the law on the work of the Warren Court, sometimes without realizing it,” Starr said.
