Harvard Law

Fresh from his own graduation from Harvard Law School, David Campos rose Thursday before nearly 400 Jefferson High graduates and their families and friends to urge the students toward prosperity and success. It is a route that Campos, 25, knows well. The son of a South-Central Los Angeles warehouse worker, Campos graduated from Jefferson High as valedictorian in 1989, less than five years after he arrived from Guatemala.

David Spindler stands along a crenellated crown of the Great Wall and gestures toward a river valley that snakes away northward into the gloom. "Over there," he says, his voice lilting in a sense of discovery. "That's the direction from which the Mongols attacked." For two hours on Oct. 23, 1554, a bloody battle raged. The raiders used ropes to reach the Chinese defenders, climbing the wall "like ants," Spindler explains.

A high concept can be a wonderful thing. Up to a point. It can get your film sold and maybe even make it look attractive, but it can't ensure much of anything else. Case in point, may it please the court, is "Legally Blonde." Starring Reese Witherspoon as a Bel-Air airhead wending her way through law school, "Legally Blonde" is basically "Clueless Goes to Harvard." Nothing wrong with that notion, but, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I've seen "Clueless" and this is no "Clueless."

Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, appointed Friday to launch the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, likely won't be the agency's first official director, but she will have a major say in who gets the powerful job. Warren also will have a broader portfolio of duties, advising President Obama on "policies and programs that are designed to protect the financial interests of middle-class families," the White House said. Obama on Friday described Warren as "a janitor's daughter who's become one of the country's fiercest advocates for the middle class" and said she would have direct access to him from her senior White House position.

Once upon a time there was a black law professor at Harvard who taught his students an unforgettable lesson. Angered that the elite school hadn't hired a woman of color as a full-time teacher, he vowed to renounce his $125,000 salary and take a leave of absence until the Ivy League institution changed its ways. One year passed, then two, and still the school hadn't budged. When the outspoken professor sought a third year of leave, officials invoked a university rule and terminated him.

Liberal fervor, which took a hit when it became apparent that Barack Obama the president was not going to live up to the promise of Barack Obama the Shepard Fairey poster, is back in action. From the streets of Manhattan to the pages of Facebook, from L.A.'s City Hall to email blasts from MoveOn.org, left-leaning types are getting their mojo back, summoning the spirit not just of the Obama campaign (that decorous, dignified affair) but kicking it old school in the vein of the wild and crazy 2004 Howard Dean campaign (you remember, back in the days when the word "liberal" was actually spoken out loud — in Dean's case really loud)

The case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald continues to exert a tenacious hold on the American media, particularly television. When Barbara Walters observed recently on ABC's "20/20" that the Green Beret, convicted of the 1970 bludgeoning deaths of his pregnant wife and two small children, "has fascinated us for years and years," she was not exaggerating.

In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud. One thing he's been unable to do is win a presidential pardon, despite the support of some of the country's most influential people. Before he left office Jan.

A man who abducted his two daughters 20 years ago, told them their mother was dead and made a new life for them under assumed names in Florida pleaded guilty Friday to kidnapping and was sentenced to probation and a $100,000 fine. Stephen Fagan, who could have gotten 20 years in prison, struck a plea bargain that called for five years of probation.

Stuart Taylor Jr. was in my law school class. Or, more accurately, I was in his law school class, since he graduated at the top of the class and I graduated. Now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Taylor has co-written, with Richard H. Sander, a professor of law at UCLA, an influential book highly critical of affirmative action. I am hesitant to write about it, first because he is a friend I'd like to keep, and second, because the book is intimidating, both in its statistics and in its evident goodwill.