“Recoveries do not happen without risk taking. “ 

JOHN CHAMBERS, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, explaining that legislators and regulators have been very constructive in addressing many areas of corporate governance, but that they should be careful not to overcorrect when considering new rules for expensing stock options, because it will impact risk taking. Chambers’s off-the-record talk [he graciously agreed to let us print the above remark) was made at the Law School on June 3 as the final keynote address of Directors’ College. Other participants in the star-studded event were SEC Chairman William Donaldson, former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, Delaware Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey, and California Treasurer Phil Angelides.

“If offering to resign the best job in the world at the greatest law school in the nation helps build the alliance necessary to get it passed, then I am happy to make that offer. “

LAWRENCE LESSIG, Professor of Law, at an April 28 news conference with U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D.-San Jose) to announce her introduction of legislation, which Lessig had helped develop, aiming to reduce e-mail spam. Lessig promised that if the bill was enacted and did not work, he would resign his Stanford professorship. The Lessig-Lofgren proposal was one of a number of bills over the last few months that gave Congress impetus to stem the proliferation of spam.

“So by taking these laws off the books, the Supreme Court is making clear that being gay is not being a criminal. “

PAMELA KARLAN, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, discussing the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on June 26. Earlier in the year Karlan had filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of 18 constitutional law professors, urging the Court to strike down the Texas sodomy law at the heart of the case.

“In short, the pipeline leaks, and if we wait for time to correct the problem, we will be waiting a very long time. At current rates of change, it will be almost three centuries before women are as likely as men to become top managers in major corporations or to achieve equal representation in Congress.” 

DEBORAH L. RHODE, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, in the introductory essay to The Difference “Difference” Makes: Women and Leadership (Stanford University Press, 2003), a collection of papers edited by Rhode. On April 21, along with Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan, Rhode spoke at the Law School about the book, explaining that women are now well represented in the middle ranks of law firms and corporations, but that more work is needed to bring them into leadership positions.

“It’s a centrist, moderate court that expresses the values of most Americans. “ 

DEAN KATHLEEN M. SULLIVAN, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, describing the general philosophy of the current Supreme Court on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on June 27. In a discussion of the decisions the Court issued in its latest term, Sullivan argued that the two most prominent rulings-its upholding of the use of race in university admissions and its striking down of an antisodomy law reflect views about racial diversity and privacy that have become widely accepted in the last generation.

“It’s hard to say justice has been done. What happened to Lisa Hopewell was very, very sad, but it’s a separate tragedy. Rick spent the past 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. “

ALISON TUCHER ’92, as quoted in the San Jose Mercury News on June 18, shortly after proving that her pro bono client, Quedillis Ricardo “Rick” Walker, had been wrongly convicted of the murder of Lisa Hopewell in 1991, for which he had served 12 years in prison on a sentence of 26 years to life. Tucher, an associate at Morrison & Foerster who first learned of the case in her last year of law school, established Walker’s factual innocence by finding witnesses who said that Walker was not present at the crime, by discovering DNA evidence that placed another suspect at the murder scene, and by uncovering deals that the prosecution made with one witness that tainted the testimony.