Washington veteran outlines her experiences

Melody Barnes was met with the aroma of pizza and a bear hug from a colleague when she entered the Rumpus Room of the School of Law on Tuesday evening.

In this informal atmosphere, Barnes outlined her experiences in law and the executive and legislative branches of the federal government to almost 20 students of the profession.

"For people who are interested in government, interested in Washington, it can be a bit confusing," she said.

Barnes was chief counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, director of legislative affairs for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assistant counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights.

Barnes, like many law school graduates, began her career working in a law firm, starting out at Shearman & Sterling in New York City.

"It took me about a week to figure out that wasn't where I belonged," she said. "I think it was sitting next to a fax machine in the middle of the night waiting for a fax from Abu Dhabi."

Barnes attended law school at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and after speaking with a guest professor, she was able to contact someone in the House's civil rights subcommittee.

"For the first time in about 10 years, they had an opening, and I got the job," she said. "It's really about networking with people and talking to people."

As a member of the subcommittee, Barnes worked for the passage of the Voting Rights Improvement Act.

A few years later, she got a call requesting that she interview to work for Kennedy. She did, and got the job.

"One of my most memorable moments was working on the Employee Nondiscrimination Act," Barnes said, referring to a bill that would have prohibited the termination of an employee based on sexual orientation.

At the same time, conservatives had introduced the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in the United States as between a man and a woman.

"We were trying to figure out how we could get our message out," Barnes said.

After Barnes drafted ENDA, she gave it to Kennedy, and he pushed it to a vote.

"We lost that bill by one vote," she said. "This shocked me, members of the Senate and members of the Republican Party. People were really grateful for the bill and that (Kennedy) was willing to push it. It makes that kind of work incredibly fulfilling."

While working for Kennedy, Barnes had a hand in President Clinton's impeachment and the rejection of President Bush's controversial judicial nominations.

Currently, Barnes serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan progressive think tank.

"Our goal is to develop new ideas around a range of issues and establish a muscular communications arm to drive these ideas out to the public," Barnes said.

According to Barnes, the Center, like the American Constitution Society, is a piece of the national progressive puzzle.

Thursday, the American Constitution Society will hold a panel discussion on judicial nominations at noon in the Law School Rotunda.

Barnes is a member of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, the Board of Directors of the Constitution Project, the Moriah Fund and Progress Through Action. She also is a senior principal at the Raben Group, a legislative law firm based in Washington, D.C.

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.