Constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky has a Texas lawyer to thank for a recent addition to his office at the just-launched University of California Irvine School of Law, where Chemerinsky is the founding dean. During an appellate judges' conference in Phoenix this weekend where he lectured, Chemerinsky’s colleagues at the ABA’s Council of Appellate Staff Attorneys (CASA) presented him with a lighthearted portrait (pictured left) painted by South Padre Island-based lawyer-slash-legal-cartoonist Charles Fincher (pictured right). Best known as the creator of The Illustrated Daily Scribble and LawComix, Fincher was also the creative power behind the now-ended political strip Thaddeus & Weez, which ran in the Op-Ed sections of eight daily print newspapers and three online papers. But Fincher also takes commissions, and an out-of-the-blue call from CASA chairman Lee Ramsey resulted in the Chemerinsky gig. The assignment: to paint a fantasy portrait of Chemerinsky in action as a shortstop for the Chicago Cubs -- the scholar’s dream gig, Fincher says. “I was absolutely thrilled to do it. Chemerinsky is an icon in constitutional law,” says Fincher, who also works as of counsel to The Allison Law Firm, a litigation boutique with offices in Brownsville and Corpus Christi. To prepare for the portrait, Fincher says he did “quite a bit of visual research on shortstops and the history of the Chicago Cubs uniforms.” Then painting commenced, with a palette of acrylics and small brushes on illustration board. The painting itself is small – about 8 x 10 – because the group wanted Chemerinsky, who has received countless awards, to be able to find room for it on his wall, Fincher explains. Fincher declines to say exactly how much he was paid for the piece, but he did say that a work of similar complexity would run about $800. Fincher says the portrait was matted and framed; the mat had two cutouts, one for the painting and another for an inscription Fincher wrote on a piece of archival paper. Fincher says the inscription gave Chemerinsky a shout-out for snagging “line drives from the nine biggest bats in baseball, a metaphor to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
-- Jenny B. Davis
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