Yes, they go for the early bird specials. They also eat dinner at 3:30.

If they ever come up with a swashbuckling School, I think one of the courses should be Laughing, Then Jumping Off Something.
When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.

It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw fuck you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Jack Handy

It's pretty adorable how many of these Elect-to-be have Facebook profiles, are (of course) friends with each other, and are being congratulated by fellow clerks on their Walls...

http://harvard.facebook.com/profile.php?id=11874

....or whose profile photos feature the #1 Male Superhottie of the Federal Judiciary...

http://stanford.facebook.com/profile.php?id=211877

Wonder how long they will stay up/public/searchable, but it's interesting... we are just now entering a time, three years after the launch of Facebook, where public figures have personal Facebook profiles (vs all those candidates who have campaign profiles).

we should update this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_clerks_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

What law school is Creighton? Is Thomas the most egalitarian employer on the Court, or is it just me?

Isn't Wikipedia information supposed to be sourced to something else (e.g., ATL) before it can be added to the entry?

Egalitarian? No. Thomas has, somehow, sunk to second tier recruits. Maybe he should offer a pay raise.

Thomas to $190k NOW!!!

Hey! GW isn't second tier! Nor is GMU! *pouts*

No, Thomas is smart enough to realize not everyone who is brilliant goes to a Top 14 nor is everyone at a Top 14 brilliant (though we are more likely to be brilliant). Perhaps Thomas appreciates people who aren't inbred northeastern prep-school bluebloods.

I don't think there are any clerks missing except the fourth Thomas clerk, and possibly some Alito clerks. Scalia hasn't hired his fourth clerk yet.

Creighton is a Tier 3 school in Omaha, Nebraska... but Patrick Strawbridge graduated first in his class and has both a state supreme court clerkship (Maine) and a federal appellate clerkship (8th Circuit) under his belt. Most crucially, I suspect, Thomas teaches a Supreme Court seminar at Creighton every year and Strawbridge took it. See the power of networking!

Anyway, I think he brings a nice bit of non-Ivy, non-big city, non-urban elite diversity to the Elect. And he's a family man and has a "love of cake", according Prettier Than Napoleon. Lovely.

"(and RBG is telling you she's not going): John Rappaport (Harvard 2006 /Reinhardt)"

Maybe this just means that she's leaving after the 2009 term and plans to go out with a bang by writing some nutty Reinhardt-inspired opinions

Thomas has special connections to Nebraska (where Creighton is located). He's a big Conhuskers fan, so is somewhat regularly in-state for games. Could be that his Creighton clerk came to his attention through those visits.

Some of Thomas' past clerks had complained to me in the past that he is prone to hiring folks based on personal connections rather than qualifications. It does seem strange that all of his clerks that year seem to be from not just outside the top 3 schools for conservative clerks (Harvard, Chicago, Yale), but from completely outside the top 10-15 law schools.

On another note, what's up with Stevens hiring 3 Garland clerks. Has anything like that ever happened before?

I believe Roberts and Alito are waiting until the Fall to finish (or in Roberts' case to begin) their hiring.

Creighton is a Catholic school. That explains it, I think.

Pretty meteoric rise for Stevens' other clerk (Klingele) .. from a less-respected law school, the bio linked to in the article doesn't mention that she even graduated summa or anything, 2 years with a district court judge, then lines up a SCOTUS clerkship before she even begins her COA one? More power to her.

Thomas has also hired previous M. Arnold clerks and use to be Circuit Justice of the Eighth Circuit, so he's likely to show some love for the Midsouth and Upper Midwest.

WGWAG?

As if the OTHER justices don't hire clerks based on personal connections... it's just that they're people with personal connections at HYSCN (and, in Justice Stevens's case, NU).

Are you sure that you've listed Justice Stevens's clerks correctly?

The rumor is that Thomas' last 2008 clerk may be starting in 2009. He may have to make a last minute hire. I am sure there are plenty of students from a crappy law school he can tap at any time.

11:53, Amen. If he needs a fourth clerk, I'm sure he can find an Ave Maria grad somewhere.

Kevin Schwartz is the guy who became the first student in 20 years to graduate with a perfect GPA at Harvard college. The inevitable march to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue continues...unless his younger sister (who also graduated with straight A's from Harvard) overtakes him.

2:32, stop being cryptic. What do you know? Spill the beans!

did kevin graduate w/ a perfect GPA? nice. though i must say, i am surprised so few people do it. getting an A at harvard is not hard at all.

11:01--

Did you go to Harvard?

Getting A's is not hard in many classes (and it's not hard to select those classes). Consistently getting A's is--even the rock stars tend to have the odd bad subject, a "bad" exam where they "only" pull an A-, or the Core where they get an arbitrary B+. There's grade inflation, but it's not that extreme.

I'd say that getting all A's as a Harvard undergrad is even harder even than getting all A's in law school. (And I say this as someone who very nearly did the latter, after earning a more-checkered Harvard undergrad diploma.)

I did go to Harvard and knew Kevin (not well, but he seemed like a nice guy. He's obviously a super smart guy too). I definitely didn't get anywhere near straight As (13 and change, if memory serves), but I disagree that the grade inflation is not extreme. I got B+s in classes I showed up to twice (mid term and final) and got As in all the classes I wanted As in (ie the ones where I put in effort and applied myself).

It's obviously one thing to do that and quite another to apply yourself in every class and get As across the board. No doubt an awesome achievement. And the fact that Kevin is the first to get 15.0 avg in 20 years speaks to just how hard it is. But I was nonetheless surprised this is such a rare accomplishment given my own experience. I would have guessed before knowing the actual stat that 5-10 people graduate with straight As every year.

11:01--

I didn't say it wasn't extreme, I said it wasn't "that extreme." It's not. In most classes, it's easy enough to get a B+ without exertion and an A- with moderate clue. It doesn't follow that it's easy to get A after A without a single slip, as Kevin did.

My views are probably biased a bit because I was a science major, where in a fair number of the classes everyone is glad when the professor curves the average score of 30% or so into a B or B+. Heck, I took one 100-level math class (translation for non-Harvard kids: non-intro-level) in which just about all the A's went to grad students and the median grade was a C+/B-. As the only freshman I was proud of my C+. (I got my share of A's, too, often with less effort.)

Still, Kevin's achievement is an impressive one, demanding hard work, brilliance--and, I would hazard, luck. (This is judging by some of the brilliant hard-working people in my class, which was a few years before Kevin's and thus had no perfect transcripts.)

Nobody cares about your grades at Harvard, how hard it is to get As at Harvard, your majors, how you hedge your arguments upon confrontation... exchange e-mail addresses and have the most boring heated debate ever in private. Still waiting on the updates.

Josh, it's more topical than the WGWAG tripe that fills most of the threads around here. But I do appreciate your careful policing of a discussion that ended two days ago.

Wow, I just found this site and feel the need to comment that if you all are so insecure that you must come aboard this site to criticize "lesser" law schools and brag about grades when you were in school you all need lives.

the word making the rounds now on kevin schwartz is that the way he got all of those As was by auditing classes before he took them for grades. seems pretty cheap.

There's no doubt that Supreme Court bonuses going to $300,000 in the next couple of years. The only question is which firms decide to keep attracting top talent and which firms are willing to become sinkholes of mediocrity. The former will pay market, the latter won't pay--at all--since they won't have clerks.

a fun factoid about Su-Yun Ahn, an '08 Ginsburg hire and winner of prizes for having the highest GPA in her class: Upon entering law school, she held herself out as gay and served as a co-chair of Outlaws; by the end of law school, she had a live-in boyfriend.