Not only does Justice Scalia has nine kids, but one of them is a Catholic priest. Under the logic of the atheist who drafted the complaint, certainly this means automatic recusal.

Hey Fed Soc Fuck,

Assuming you're talking about the main story of this post, the attorney who filed the recusal motion against Zloch is Jewish, not an atheist. Not everyone who worries about state/church separation issues (even if the worry is misguided in this case) is an atheist. Many devoutly religious people, from a variety of faith traditions, feel strongly that there should be a wall of separation.

And by "separation," 9:04, you surely don't mean "exclusion of people who hold these beliefs," do you?

What an insult to the Court. The presumption should be that a federal judge can live up to his oath - which, btw, is usually concluded with a request to God to help him uphold it - to obey the Constitution. If he displays objectionable bias, it can be appealed. Dressed-up judge shopping, imo.

Yes, how dare a judge would hire a law clerk from Ave Maria. What's next, is a judge going to hire Christian clerks from *gasp* Regent or Liberty University? Don't we need a law that a judge can only hire clerks from schools where 98% of the faculty supports the Democratic Party??

Interestingly, 9:04, Orthodox Jews (who, in case you don't know, are the Jews who are truly committed to their religious faith) are almost as likely to vote Republican as are evangelical Christians, and they as a group agree with the so-called "Christian Right" on most moral/political issues, including Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Don't make this about Christianity v. minority religions; this is about freedom of religion v. coercive secularism.

no, 9:16, i surely don't mean exclusion --of anybody, including the atheist, agnostic, Hinduist, etc. who cannot in good conscience request that one (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) god help her uphold the Constitution. as i said, this particular case is probably meritless, tho none of us know that for sure -- the article really says nothing helpful about the merits. my *only* point was it is ignorant to assume that everyone concerned about state/church separation issues is an atheist.

Actually, I'm find with Ave Maria, but it appears that lawyers from Regent University - not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular - really don't have what it takes.

Oh Fed Soc Fuck,

You are the one who mentioned atheists, and you are the one who keeps making this about Christianity. My point -- once again -- is that people of nearly all theological persuasions can take either side of the state/church debate. it is NOT about Christians versus atheists. And plenty of Orthodox Jews equally support state/church separation -- precisely because their religion is important to them, they want the government to stay the fuck out of it. Granted, atheists and Orthodox Jews may have different *reasons* for supporting separation, but many of them are of one mind about the bottom line.

Say, let's take a minute to remember xoxohth and try to keep our comments limited to good old snark.

Religious invective is not at all fun to read nor is it helpful ion the slightest (except, perhaps for spotting bigots).

with apologies for the missing comma in my previous post.

Wow, actually, I just looked and xoxo is really spewing the invective on my alma mater, Fordham. Luckily, unlike everyone who spends time on xoxo, I have a good job.

This is not an establishment clause issue. Rather, the issue is whether a judge is competent (again: competent) to hear a case in view of his religious beliefs. This is classic secular progressive distortion of reality.

Cheers 9:26!

Someone remind 9:04 / Anonymous at 9:32 to take his/her valium prescription this morning.

I think the filer's point about Ave Maria's law school is not that it may have Republican faculty, but that it's a Tier 4 law school that the judge has apparently hired from more than once (leading one to believe that he may be interested in something other than the academic credentials of his clerks). I think you'd be hard pressed to find any other district court clerks in a major jurisdiction that come from Tier 4 law schools.

That said, the motion looks pretty dumb to me.

I've heard lawyers from Ave Maria get crucified in court.

"Ave Maria, gee it's great to see ya."

Even at Tier 4s, the top students are pretty good. The Tier 4 drop-off from there is quicker and steeper. I went to Ave. Our top students were outstanding. LSATs in the 170s, offers from T16 schools. Lots of federal clerkships. Students that could have gone anywhere but chose Ave for her mission.

But don't worry, bigot@9:04, Ave won't be producing any more clerks in a year or so. Its crazy funder, pizza guy Tom Monaghan, is destroying the place so he can drag it to his real estate project in Florida. Its worthless Board of Governors bent over for T$M and its evil Dean Dobranski is purging faculty left and right, including trying to fire a tenured prof.

I should have gone to Loyola.

To Fed Soc you should check your facts.

Judges hire from 3rd/4th tier schools all of the time. How can this be? Well, the majority of the district court judges, MJs and BANKRJs didn't go to top10 schools and will hire law clerks from their alma mater or a school they feel a connection with because they realize top students end up at lower ranked schools for many different reasons. For instance, look at the federal judges in Oklahoma. I would be willing to bet one of them has hired students from Tulsa or OKC law schools both 4th tier; the same holds true in every state. Also, a COA judge in the 10th Cir. hires one law clerk from KU every year.

Granted, judges only hire people from the top of the class at 3rd/4th tier schools whereas middle of the road students at a top 10 school can often find clerkships if they look hard enough.

The Bible teaches: "Render unto strippers the things which are strippers'."

Amen. Sometimes people get drunk and look at their credit card bill in the morning and dispute that which is strippers,' but render they must.

I move to recuse Lat from writing on this topic, as he went to Catholic high school.

You people are retarded.

1. Lower-ranked law schools, *on average* produce less capable students than higher-ranked schools, but Yale doesn't have a monopoly on brilliance.

2. The point of hiring a clerk is for the judge to find someone who can assist him with his work. Judges who actually do their own work might have different ideas of what they want out of a clerk. Some just need good bluebookers. Some want tennis partners. Some want people who they can stand to work with for a year. Some want brilliant people who can discuss cases with them. Others want mini-judges who can do their work for them while they go to networking conferences. Many of these things have little or nothing to do with the transcript or the clerk's alma mater.

I agree that lower-ranked law schools have many intelligent students. I'm just saying that federal judges generally don't hire them.

I'm not sure what KU is, but I don't see anything that could be a KU listed in the Tier 3 or Tier 4 listings.

COAclerk, you say "check your facts," then say you're "willing to bet" that a judge hired someone from a Tier 4 school. Having been a federal district court clerk, I can say from my experience that we had no Tier 4 clerks in my court. I can't speak for what other courts are like, but haven't seen any evidence that Tier 4 students are hired as clerks with any regularity.

I agree that the overwhelming majority of the truly best and brighest students tend to be concentrated at Harvard and Yale, with many other brilliant students at the other top schools, and fewer smart students as you go further down in the rankings. Very few students at schools below the top 6 would have been within the top 10% at HLS, for example.

But one major exception to this are the schools with a clear religious mission like Ave Maria. I can see why a top student who is also a devout Catholic would want to attend Ave Maria over a more typical top school. This is an understandable decision, and I don't think that it is comparable to choosing to attend a secular 2nd, 3rd or 4th tier school over a top school, which doesn't seem to make much sense for most people. As such, you can expect the top 5% at Ave Maria to be far, far stronger students than the top 5% at schools that are higher in the rankings, so it is not surprising that the top students there would get good clerkships.

Fed Soc - agree on the last post. But I wonder why Ave Maria over say Notre Dame? - ND being a damn good school with an obvious Catholic identity.

Myself as a Catholic - I would choose ND in a heart beat.