Supreme Court Clerks

Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: The Chief's All Done, Too

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Today’s Morning Docket links to this fascinating article by one of our favorite Supreme Court correspondents, Tony Mauro. Mauro writes:

Among prominent federal appeals court judges in the 1990s, Barack Obama was known as “the one who got away.”

In 1990, Obama had been elected the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review, which made him a blazingly hot prospect as a law clerk for one of the top federal appeals judges, who in turn would almost certainly send him on to the Supreme Court as a clerk.

But with a remarkable certitude that still amazes his friends and elders, Obama said no to all that…

But the three individuals listed below didn’t “get away”; they have not escaped the justices’ clutches. They’ve all been hired to clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts in October Term 2008 (who is, by the way, now done hiring for next Term — sorry, aspiring JGR clerks):

1. William Baude (Yale 2007 / McConnell)
2. Jeffrey Harris (Harvard 2006 / Sentelle / Silberman)
3. Erin Murphy (Georgetown 2006 / Sykes)

Will Baude (pictured) is a fellow blogger, founder of Crescat Sententia (where he once interviewed us). Jeff Harris is currently finishing up the second of two D.C. Circuit clerkships (because, you know, doing just one wasn’t prestigious enough). Erin Murphy is currently a Bristow Fellow. She was, incidentally, hired by then-Judge Samuel Alito to clerk for him on the Third Circuit — so she has actually been hired by two justices (even though she never clerked for SAA due to his intervening elevation).
Also, note the feeding by Judges Michael McConnell (10th Cir.) and superhottie Diane Sykes (7th Cir.). They’re both highly-regarded judges who are reputed to be great to work for. Expect to see them feed more in the future (especially Judge McConnell, a former SCOTUS clerk himself — having once been a SCOTUS clerk is highly correlated with feeding your own clerks).
The current tally of OT 2008 SCOTUS clerks, with the three new Roberts clerks added, appears after the jump.
The Man That Got Away [Legal Times]


Are you aware of an OT 2008 clerk who isn’t on the list? If so, please contact us, by email (subject line: “Supreme Court clerk hiring”).
You can also post a comment to this post. But we prefer email for this subject, for verification and possible follow-up.
By the way, we’ve noticed that some people have been entering SCOTUS clerk hiring info directly into Wikipedia, instead of sending it to us first. But at least in theory, information should appear somewhere else first, and then migrate over to Wikipedia. As explained by the New York Times:

[E]ven when Wikipedia’s function is journalistic, its aim is not; rather than report the news, the goal is to act as a kind of phenomenally fast, bias-free digest of what others have already reported elsewhere…. [According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales,] “Wikipedia derives a certain degree of authority and trust in the mind of the reader by avoiding original research and citing sources.”

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So please send us your Supreme Court clerk hiring info first. After we verify it with our independent sources and post it, then submit the info to Wikipedia (and send along our link as the source). Thanks!
OCTOBER TERM 2008 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of December 13, 2007)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts
1. William Baude (Yale 2007 / McConnell)
2. Jeffrey Harris (Harvard 2006 / Sentelle / Silberman)
3. Erin Murphy (Georgetown 2006 / Sykes)
4. Porter Wilkinson (UVA 2007 / Kavanaugh)
Justice John Paul Stevens
1. Jessica Bulman-Pozen (Yale 2007 / Garland)
2. Cecelia Klingele (University of Wisconsin 2005 / B. Crabb (W.D. Wis.) / S. Black (11th Cir.))
3. Lindsey Powell (Stanford 2007 / Garland)
4. Damian Williams (Yale 2007 / Garland)
Justice Antonin Scalia
1. Jameson Jones (Stanford 2007 / Sutton)
2. Yaakov Roth (Harvard 2007 / Boudin)
3. David Thompson (Stanford 2007 / Kozinski)
4. Moshe Spinowitz (Harvard 2006 / Boudin)
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
1. Ashley Keller (University of Chicago 2007 / Posner)
2. Travis Lenkner (Kansas 2005 / Kavanaugh)
3. Steven Shepard (Yale 2007 / Kozinski)
4. Chris Walker (Stanford 2006 / Kozinski)
Justice David H. Souter
1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
Justice Clarence Thomas
1. William S. Consovoy (GMU 2001 / E. Jones)
2. Jennifer Mascott (GW 2006 / Kavanaugh)
3. Patrick Strawbridge (Creighton 2004 / M. Arnold)
4. Claire Evans (Rutgers – Camden 2002 / Simandle (D.N.J.) / Chertoff (3d Cir.) / Sentelle)
Bonus hire, for October Term 2009: Marah Stith (Yale 2006 / O’Scannlain)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Sue-Yun Ahn (Columbia 2006 / Cote (S.D.N.Y.) / Tatel Tot)
2. Miriam Seifter (Harvard 2007 / Garland)
3. Kevin Schwartz (Yale 2006 / Calabresi)
4. Rob Yablon (Yale 2006 / W. Fletcher)
Bonus hire, for October Term 2009: John Rappaport (Harvard 2006 / Reinhardt)
Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Seth Grossman (Yale 2005 / Reinhardt / Calabresi)
2. Aileen McGrath (Harvard 2007 / Boudin)
3. Matthew E. Price (Harvard 2006 / Boudin)
4. ?
Justice Samuel Alito
1. Dana R. Irwin (Yale 2002 / Scirica)
2. Jack L. White (Pepperdine 2003 / Alito)
3. ?
4. ?
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (retired):
1. ?
Please bring errors or omissions to our attention by email (subject line: “Supreme Court clerk hiring”). Thanks.
List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States [Wikipedia]
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Supreme Court clerks (scroll down)

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