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-you are cordially invited toCocktailsWith•DavidlocationFour Seasonshostkatrina Deweytime5:00 PML A W D R A G O N 194 I s s u e 13 Photos by: jennifer pottheiser
It’s 4:58 when David Boies walksup the steps to the Four Seasons bar in MidtownManhattan and orders a Screwdriver in a tall glass. It’sa plush place and Boies’ favorite watering hole, juststeps from his firm’s New York office.As ever, he’s juggling nine million things. Al Gore is onthe phone, he’s just returned from a trial over a $400M realestate foreclosure in San Francisco, settled the Oracle-SAPcase for $306M, is taking on the federal government forwrongfully overtaking AIG during the financial crisis andis preparing to celebrate his firm’s 15th anniversary and itsrecord ascent to the most elite ranks of U.S. law firms.He’s also looking forward to the next chapter of Perry,the seminal case that re-cast the issue of gay marriage.In 2009, he and Ted Olson signed on to not just overturnCalifornia’s Proposition 8, but also to legalize gay marriagethrough a courtroom trial. They faced skepticism and criticismnot just from those who opposed marriage equality,but also from leaders of the public interest community, whoquestioned the role of star private lawyers on the battlefieldthey had tended for so long.Which is where vintage Boies comes in: when in doubt,hold a trial. And that’s where the facts are parceled, tossedand challenged and the truth emerges.Boies watched the civil rights movement from SouthernCalifornia, where his parents had moved the family fromMarengo, Ill., when he was 13. He attended junior highschool in Compton, and was president of the University ofRedlands Young Republicans Club while a married fatherof two children at 19-years old. Over the next decade, hewould work a construction crew, teach journalism at PattonState Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane, become asingle dad of four children, and an attorney at Cravath.He appreciated exquisitely the role law was beginningto play in changing lives, including his. That philosophy –of law as a tool to protect and better lives – has been thestream that flows through his career, whether representingcivil rights volunteers in Mississippi or defending CBS andMike Wallace over the Westmoreland case; the governmentin its efforts to contain Microsoft or the Democratic NationalCommittee winning a permanent injunction against theRepublican National Committee’sefforts to disenfranchise African-American voters.And now Perry and the rights of everyone to marry. Adoting father of six and married for 30 years to Mary, ittook less than two seconds for him to sign on with Olsonto represent Kris Perry in her lawsuit to wed Sandy Stier,her partner with whom she has four boys. Since they filedthe suit in 2009, public support for gay marriage has ascendedfrom 37 to 48 percent, with a corresponding dropin those opposed. And in the Perry case itself, the 9th U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals found that California could notdeny same-sex couples the right to marry.LAWDRAGON: And they said it couldn’t be done.DAVID BOIES: Well, we’re not done yet. We’re still waitingon the Supreme Court. But you’re right. We’ve changed thelives of not just our clients, but of couples and individualseverywhere who deserve equal dignity in their personalchoices.LD: Beyond whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court takesthe Perry case, there’s been a huge shift in public opinionin favor of marriage equality of the type that makes theoutcome simply a matter of when, not if.DB: Well, you know, that’s what a trial does. It exposes thetruth. You can’t hide from the truth on a witness stand. Andwhen you put up a witness – who is really the only personopposing gay marriage at the trial – and ask him what isthe harm from allowing gay couples to wed and he says, "Idon’t know," well, that exposes the truth.LD: It was courageous of you and Ted to take on that case.You had to battle not just uninformed gay marriage opponents,but also much of the public interest community,which thought you were taking too big of a risk.DB: Well, I’ll say this. We have a lot of admiration for everyonewho played a role in this. But what’s important isn’t whowins the battle, it’s winning the war. It’s ensuring that everyonehas the right to marry the person they love.LD: I’m curious how you became you. You’re from Marengo,Illinois, which is a small farming community outsideChicago. Were your parents liberal? That would be unusualfor those times and that area.DB: I actually grew up a Republican. I was president of theUniversity of Redlands Young Republican Club. My fatherwas Republican. His grandfather had been the publisher ofa newspaper in Sycamore, Illinois, called The TrueRepublican. I was a Republican through college.But I really changed with the civil rights movement,where, like a lot of people in those days, I grew up reallynaïve about race relations. As I began to confrontthe real extent of discrimination and became activelyinvolved in the civil rights movement, what I found wasthat in those days – not all Republicans – but the RepublicanParty in general was on one side of that struggle.There were a lot of racist Democrats and there were a lotof Republicans who made enormous contributions to theI s s u e 13 195 l a w d r a g o n . c o m
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