They traveled by bus to Florida competitions and stayed at Holiday Inns. They flew to Ivy League campuses for nationwide meets. That’s how Judge Jackson fell in love with Harvard, which she would later attend for her undergraduate and regulation levels.

“We all did end up in Ivy League schools,” quipped Ms. Chafetz, who went to Cornell.

Judge Jackson competed in two disciplines that have been extra speech than debate: oratory, the place contestants write and ship unique speeches, and interpretation, the place they carry out dramatic or humorous components from present materials. She was a nationwide champion in oratory.

Ms. Berger died in 2008. Judge Jackson was amongst a number of debaters quoted in her Miami Herald obituary.

The debaters’ résumés are spectacular. Nathaniel Persily, a constitutional regulation professor at Stanford. Judge Laura Anne Stuzin of Florida’s eleventh Judicial Circuit. Benjamin G. Greenberg, the promenade date turned United States lawyer, now in personal apply.

“It’s like doctor, doctor, professor, professor, lawyer, lawyer, professor, judge, judge, doctor,” stated Stephen F. Rosenthal, a Miami lawyer who has identified Judge Jackson since junior excessive and counts her as one among his finest pals. He met his future spouse, Mindy Zane Rosenthal, a debater at Miami Beach Senior High, in a contest. (Then he went to Harvard.)

Last month, when Judge Jackson’s identify floated to the highest of most lists of candidates to exchange the retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer, even Palmetto debaters who have been now not in frequent contact started texting one another to gawk. Someone despatched round a photograph of the controversy staff from again within the day, and likewise a photograph of Judge Jackson and Mr. Rosenthal from their senior yearbook.