Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Justice Breyer's Final Hire
(And a Digression on Judges Katzmann and Rakoff)
We bring you an addendum to Monday's post about the latest in Supreme Court clerk hiring. And we're pleasantly surprised to see that we have this news before Wikipedia.
Recently hired to clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer in October Term 2008: Brianne Gorod, currently in the D.C. office of O'Melveny & Myers. Gorod is a 2005 Yale Law grad and a former clerk to the judicial tag team of Jed S. Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) and Robert A. Katzmann (2d Cir.).
Those who obsessively follows SCOTUS clerk hiring know that Judges Rakoff and Katzmann have jointly sent clerks to the Court before. But contrary to some rumors, they're not always a "package deal" when it comes to hiring (although there is a significant degree of overlap among their current and former clerks).
Judge Katzmann prefers to hire individuals who have clerked on the district court (or have some other kind of post-law school work experience), so he regularly turns to Judge Rakoff, for whom he has a great deal of respect, as a source of clerkly talent. Judge Katzmann sometimes also helps promising applicants to his own chambers to secure interviews with Judge Rakoff. Conversely, Judge Rakoff also refers and sends clerks to Judge Katzmann, as well as to other Second Circuit judges, and he has also hired some clerks after Second Circuit clerkships. In short, both judges think it's valuable for people to have both district and circuit clerkship experiences, and they try to help make that happen for their clerks. But they don't hire 100 percent of their clerks jointly.
The current tally of OT 2008 SCOTUS clerks, with Brianne Gorod added, appears after the jump.
Are you aware of an OT 2008 (or OT 2009) clerk who isn't listed below? 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. Thanks.
OCTOBER TERM 2008 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of January 31, 2008)
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)
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)
For October Term 2009: Pamela Bookman (UVA 2006 / Sack) and John Rappaport (Harvard 2006 / Reinhardt)
Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Brianne Gorod (Yale 2005 / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
2. Seth Grossman (Yale 2005 / Reinhardt / Calabresi)
3. Aileen McGrath (Harvard 2007 / Boudin)
4. Matthew E. Price (Harvard 2006 / Boudin)
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)
(17) Comments
Booooooorrrrrrrrrrring......
Yale gets another SC Clerk.
More interesting: Fifth clerk with two levels of out of school experience.
Is it bedtime already? I thought I just woke up.
It's all about the dist ct/circ ct combo.
adversarial department??? OMM needs to come up with a new name for that, or maybe that is the entire firm.
NYU should be ashamed to be the only elite school with zero representation.
NYU should be ashamed, period.
If you go work before clerking, do you have to work in litigation? Or do they ever take transactional people?
Rakoff is no doubt an intelligent man but I hope to never appear in his court- I've heard he is an utterly arrogant JERK.
The top of T1 schools, let alone H/Y/S clerk ranks, are full of people who are socially awkward or academically focused to the point that they don't know where to begin on the "hottie" mating dance deal.
Way more Aspies than found in the general population as well. And have you ever met a "normal" law professor outside of uber trial lawyers in clinical programs?
Most people aren't bad looking and could alter their appearance to the point they'd be at least a 7. Most of the geek squad just don't care/understand all that much.
When you have done nothing but select for intelligence and academics for seven years and two rounds of standardized tests that normal people brick, you are not going to get normal people.
11:11 has it right ... unless you go to an elite Business school
Chicago is the third best school for an SC placement? Yeah, go get fisted, Leiter.
Lovely comments here. Congrats to Ms. Gorod. Thanks to Lat for the update. The rest of you can go f yourselves.
Chicago is the third best school for an SC placement? Yeah, go get fisted, Leiter.
This is great news!!! Brianne is the sweetest person ever. And here we thought only jerks got SCOTUS clerkships... Congrats, Brianne.
If you go to Brianne's O'Melveny bio page, it lists her as being a member of 3 different law journals: 1. YLJ; 2. Y Law and Policy Review; and 3. Y J of Health Pol, Law, Ethics.
I know she's a superstar, but how is that possible to be an editor on 3 different law journals?
(She also has a total of 4 published articles: 2 law review articles and 2 comments).
"how is that possible to be an editor on 3 different law journals?"
It's not unlike taking three different classes during the SAME semester in law school, or being staffed on three different cases as a lawyer, or wearing shoes, socks AND underwear on the same day.
The top 0.01% of lawyers somehow find a way to do this, but their methods are very mysterious.