A Law School Graduate Who Makes Beautiful Music
Above the Law
By David Lat
We recently shared with you a fascinating, legally themed musical project: Scalia/Ginsburg, an opera about two of the U.S. Supreme Court’s leading lights, by award-winning composer Derrick Wang.
Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg, longtime colleagues and good friends, don’t share much in terms of jurisprudence but do share a love of opera. It’s fitting, then, that their Con Law clashes will serve as the basis for a new operatic work.
Where did Wang come up with the idea for an opera about these two distinguished jurists? As it turns out, Wang is not only a composer but a law school graduate. Where did he go to law school, and why?
After Derrick Wang graduated from Harvard College and the Yale School of Music, he entered law school at the University of Maryland. In this interview with Spencer Mazyck of Bloomberg Law, Wang explains his professional journey — in his great, surprisingly deep voice, fit for a newscaster (or opera singer) — and discusses the reactions of the two justices to his work about them.
…Although he took the Maryland bar exam this past summer, Wang is currently focused not on practicing law but on finishing “Scalia/Ginsburg.” It sounds like it will be an amazing piece — check out some of the excellent lyrics over at NPR — and we can’t wait to see two of our favorite judicial divas portrayed on stage by actual divas.
