Maggie Upshaw, '16, Wins Bristow Fellowship
Alumna Maggie Upshaw, ’16, has won a Bristow Fellowship in the Office of the Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice, marking the third consecutive year that a University of Chicago Law School graduate has been chosen for the highly competitive program. Upshaw will begin her one-year fellowship this summer after completing a clerkship with Judge William A. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Maggie will be an exemplary Bristow Fellow,” said Dean Thomas J. Miles, the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics. “She is so deserving of this fellowship, and we are enormously proud of her.”
Upshaw, who served as a comments editor on the University of Chicago Law Review, was known at the Law School for her strong analytical skills and ability to articulate complex ideas.
“Do you know how great chess players are said to be able to look several moves ahead? That's how Maggie was with legal arguments,” said David Strauss, the Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law. “When I raised a question in class, she saw the arguments on both sides, the counter-arguments, the answers to those counter-arguments, and the answers to those, all pretty much instantaneously, so that when she raised her hand and made a comment I was, time and again, taken aback by how sophisticated her comment was.”
Last spring, Upshaw won the Law School’s Casper Platt Award for Most Outstanding Paper for a piece titled "‘Truly Individualized' Race-Conscious Assessments."
“The paper analyzed some cases and problems that I have taught in class for many years, but Maggie came up with a way of approaching one of those problems that I had never thought of before, had never seen in the literature, and had never heard anyone else say,” said Strauss, who supervised her work on the paper. “And it was really smart.”
Upshaw, who is married to classmate Amy Upshaw, ’16, said the fellowship would be “an amazing opportunity to work with the best lawyers in the country.” Upshaw, who immediately accepted the fellowship offer when Acting Solicitor General Ian Heath Gershengorn called earlier this month, has long had an interest in appellate advocacy. She said the Bristow Fellowship will complement the experience she is getting as a federal appellate clerk by giving her a new vantage point.
Bristow Fellows help draft briefs in opposition to certiorari filed against the government in the U.S. Supreme Court and prepare recommendations to the Solicitor General regarding authorization of government appeals in the lower courts. They also assist staff lawyers in preparing petitions for certiorari and briefs on the merits in Supreme Court cases, work on special projects, and assist the Solicitor General and other lawyers in the office in preparing oral arguments in the Supreme Court.
It is an opportunity for which Upshaw is extraordinarily well-qualified, her professors said.
“Maggie possesses an uncommonly insightful mind, one that fuses analytical firepower with a deep appreciation for the way that law impacts everyday lives,” said Justin Driver, the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law and a Herbert and a Marjorie Fried Research Scholar. “She compiled an astonishing record of academic achievement, but managed to remain utterly humble and unassuming.”
Upshaw will follow Joseph Schroeder, ’15, who is currently serving as a Bristow Fellow, and Evan Rose, ’13, who served in 2014-15.