Students lined up early inside The University of Alabama School of Law Friday morning in anticipation of hearing this year’s Albritton Lecture Series speaker, Justice Elena Kagan of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Currently, eight members of the Supreme Court have spoken in the series, including Kagan. The lectures, which have brought a number of both U.S. and international supreme court justices to The University of Alabama, is named for Judge William Harold Albritton, U.S. district court judge for the middle district of Alabama.

William Brewbaker, Dean of the School of Law, opened the lecture, retelling a time when someone had asked him if having such a distinguished series of speakers was “normal” for a law school.

“The answer is no,” he said.

The lecture was held conversation-style, with Kagan, Brewbaker and Albritton seated in a semi-circle, discussing Kagan’s service and experience.

Before joining the Supreme Court in 2010, Kagan served as associate counsel and deputy assistant for domestic policy to President Bill Clinton, as the first female dean of the Harvard Law School and as solicitor general of the United States, among many significant accomplishments.

Brewbaker and Albritton both prompted Kagan with questions for the hour-long lecture, though Kagan began by explaining why she felt compelled to speak in the series, after asking other Justices “what is it that everybody goes down there for?”

She said she was told it was a “command performance,” and that she should go eventually. In addition to speaking at the University, she was told there was one other thing she must do: eat at Dreamland Barbecue.

“I mentioned this, and I immediately got an offer of ribs to take back with me,” Kagan said.

Brewbaker began the conversation by asking about fictional or real lawyer stories that have been meaningful to Kagan, giving Kagan a chance to touch on the time she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court during the 1987 term.

“He was the greatest story teller I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” she said. “He could make you cry, he could make you laugh.”

Kagan described Marshall as a “great lawyer” and “supremely ethical man.”

“To be exposed to that, day after day, changed me forever,” Kagan said.

In response to one of Albritton’s questions on the nomination and confirmation practice, Kagan described her experience going through the process, meeting with 81 senators as part of her courtesy visits.

Brewbaker went on to ask about the influence of having previously worked in a political job on her service as a justice.

She said working in a political capacity in the Clinton administration involved a different way of thinking, and has probably been the least of all things that affect her service now.