Bobbleheads

About the bobbleheads

We make them for the joy of it, and then we give them away. We do not sell them. If you get one, we hope you enjoy playing with it as much as we enjoyed making it. (All of our bobbleheads are produced by the finest bobblemaker in the world, Alexander Global Promotions.)

We make no promises about when we will make them or who will get them. Some (but not all) subscribers to the Green Bag as of the date we announce the release of a bobblehead receive a certificate potentially redeemable for a doll, and we arbitrarily and capriciously give certificates to some folks who are not subscribers (mostly law school public interest groups that auction the dolls at their annual fundraisers). Moreover, even holders of certificates are not guaranteed a doll, because we reserve the right to refuse to redeem any certificate for any reason, including but not limited to (a) a shortage of dolls, (b) reasonable or unreasonable suspicion of theft or forgery of a certificate, (c) rudeness by a person seeking to redeem a certificate, and (d) caprice. So, there is no way to lock-in a Green Bag bobblehead. If you want to buy one, your best bets are law school public interest charity auctions and eBay.

About certificate redemption

The bobbleheads are invariably in short supply and too fragile for us to ship with any confidence that they will arrive in good condition. And besides, we cannot afford to do it. That means redemption of a certificate must be done in person.

Instructions are here: Bring (or arrange for someone else to bring) your bobblehead certificate to the Green Bag's bobbleheadquarters in the Washington, DC office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, 1625 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC. Please call (202) 383-5300 to make an appointment, because if you do not call ahead, you may arrive at the firm's Eye Street office only to discover that there is no one available to complete the exchange, or there are no bobbleheads available at the moment, or there is some other frustrating reason why you cannot get what you came for. Besides, it is polite to call ahead. So, we strongly suggest it.

To facilitate retrieval of bobbleheads by proxies, we do not insist that a person redeeming a certificate be the original recipient of that certificate. Please don’t lose a certificate. If you do, you will also lose any bobblehead that might be associated with it. We will not respond to a photocopy, fax, scan, or other reproduction of a certificate. Originals only.

The bobbleheads themselves

They are listed below in order of their appointment to the Court (with release dates in parentheses). All prototypes of the bobbleheads (and samples of all the production versions) are archived at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at the Yale Law School, where they are surely safer than they would be in the clumsy hands of Green Bag editors. To learn more about the Yale collection, click here and here.

• John Jay (2010)

• John Rutledge (2010)

• William Cushing (2010)

• James Wilson (2010)

• John Blair (forthcoming)

• Benjamin R. Curtis (2007)

• Louis D. Brandeis (2008)

• Louis D. Brandeis (2008) (Harvard ed.)

• Harry A. Blackmun (2009) (for FantasyLaw champions only)

• Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (forthcoming)

• William H. Rehnquist (2003)

• John Paul Stevens (2004)