Supreme Court Retirement Watch: Justice Stevens?
A few weeks ago, we were emailing with one of our sources about an interesting fact we noticed, based on Above the Law’s real-time coverage of Supreme Court clerk hiring. The fact: thus far, Justice John Paul Stevens has hired just one law clerk for October Term 2010 (Sam Erman (Michigan 2007 / Garland)).
We didn’t write about it at the time, because OT 2010 is still a year away, and it seemed a bit speculative to make much of it so far in advance. But others noticed this fact too — and were faster on the trigger about it. Like the AP:
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court’s liberals will retire next year.If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.
Souter’s failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court….
Indeed. We started the speculation about Justice Souter’s retirement back in April 2009, over at Underneath Their Robes, based in part on his lack of law clerk hiring (and based in part on a sighting of him with Senator Pat Leahy).
But back to Justice Stevens:
In response to a question from The Associated Press, Stevens confirmed through a court spokeswoman Tuesday that he has hired only one clerk for the term that begins in October 2010. He is among several justices who typically have hired all four clerks for the following year by now. Information about this advance hiring is not released by the court but is regularly published by some legal blogs.
Cough cough — like Above the Law?
Commentary from expert observers, plus a reader poll, after the jump.
Veteran Supreme Court litigator Tom Goldstein, founder of the renowned SCOTUSblog, had this to say when we reached out to him:
I have been talking to folks for a couple of weeks about this. It certainly is not an accident. At the same time, it is not a commitment to retire. Everyone who sees him says he is doing great. He has the option of the summer of 2011 to retire, pre-election. To me, this is a significant sign that he is considering it, not that he has decided to retire.
Professor Orin Kerr — who correctly read the law clerk hiring tea leaves back in 2005 to predict Justice O’Connor’s retirement, based on original reporting by Underneath Their Robes — offered this commentary to ATL on the Justice Stevens news:
On one hand, the media first started reporting JPS retirement rumors in the 1980s, when I was in junior high. On the other hand, the law clerk hiring clue worked with DHS, and we usually know so little about what the Justices are thinking that this is probably the best we’re likely to get.
The upshot: nobody knows anything (not even the most knowledgeable observers), at least not definitively. Maybe even Justice Stevens doesn’t know for sure when he’ll be retiring.
But this kind of speculation sure is fun, isn’t it? Feel free to continue it, in the comments, and vote in our reader poll below.
(For additional discussion, see, e.g., Robert Barnes’s post at the Washington Post’s 44 blog, Adam Liptak’s piece in the New York Times, Ashby Jones’s post at the WSJ Law Blog, or Orin Kerr’s post at the Volokh Conspiracy.)
Justice Stevens slows his hiring at high court [AP via WSJ Law Blog]
In Staff Move by Justice Stevens, Some See Signal [New York Times]
Justice Stevens Hires Just One Clerk [44: The Obama Presidency / Washington Post]
Justice Stevens Hires One Clerk Instead of Usual Four [Volokh Conspiracy]
(76) Comments
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Did Latham lay off any first-years? How did this affect the young lawyers' careers?
First
"We didn't write about it at the time"
But nytimes.com has had the story on its front page all morning so... ya know... we figured we'd recycle it here...
So. Lame.
I hear that whenever PE sets foot in his peer firm the song "Sympathy for the Devil" begins playing.
Is Latham going to retire?
Wow, way to jump right on this story. This is the first I am hearing of this potential retirement today. Thanks for all you do to keep us up to date on breaking news.
- An appreciative reader.
JPS should hire me, I have V50 experience and clerkship experience!
Huh? In New York, Supreme Court judges retire all the time. This is not news.
more stories on sexting plz
It is beyond me as to why someone would choose to clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court instead of working for a preeminent peer law firm and experiencing the fine inebriants, womenfolk, and private jets that come with such a gig.
Incidentally, I will be enjoying all three this evening.
Speaking of SCOTUSblog, why haven't they written about this yet?
8 would've been funnier if it actually said "back in New York, Supreme Court judges retire all the time, it's no big deal"
#10 is top 3 most entertaining posters here.
Alright, it's now 3 in the afternoon. What have you bastards done with Kash?
ATL: where I go to read a rehash of every NYTimes, WSJ.com or other article I already read earlier that morning, along with scintillating repartee among the various "guests" and the tired, derivative characters that have been created, each of whom seems more retarded than the last.
Truly this has become a destination site.
15 - Then why do you come here?
1st to say WHO CARES
15 = racist.
15:
Who you talking about? Gimme a cracker! Damn!
Nice of JPS to retire so Obama can get his replacement approved before he loses the Dem. majority Senate to the 2010 mid-terms elections.
Uncle Thomas, J. could redeem himself and retire immediately. Or at least surprise someone for a change.
#13 is top 3 easiest entertained posters here.
also might be #10.
Bork Soto Jr. in 2010!
22: Nothing wrong with laughing.
-13
Let's have a bracket for douchiest Supreme Court Justice.
15 = post of the year
15 - Don't give Lat a hard time about this. It is his real-time reporting of Supreme Court clerk hiring (or non-hiring) that made the AP article possible.
In this case, the MSM was piggybacking on the blogs.
if Steven's retires this year, what happens to the one clerk hired? Laid off from SCOTUS?
Why in the hell does Lat use the word "we" when referring to himself? I am so sick of the pompous, liberal, hippie, politically correct, moronic journalism that reeks out of this stinking fuck-filled shithole site.
Sotomayor will retire someday probably. 1st!
27 - Retired justices still hire one clerk per year
27, senior Justices get one clerk. SOC still hires clerks, for example. Not that this is likely to matter to you personally.
28 - Lat is a conservative. He speaks before Federalist Society chapters all the time. He was VP of the Yale Fed Soc chapter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lat
But thanks for playing.
Clearly Stevens needs to be repalced by a boring conservative white guy like Roberts, who thinks long and hard about each case before coming down on the side of Prosecutors and big biz in every single case.
Cant comment
Mailing my resume to Stevens for one of three openings ASAP!
Comment removed by moderator.
It is in this nation's interest to have an independent judiciary comprised of judges who interpret the U.S. Constitution as narrowly and strictly as the framers intended. Justice Stevens has failed in this respect. If you look at some of the wiser holdings of yesteryear, most notably the Court’s ruling in Lochner v. New York and Buck v. Bell, you'll notice a Court that was much more cognizant and wary of the deeply-rooted values upon which this great nation was built. In contrast, Justice Stevens has been more an elite than a judge, always looking to impose his personal “intellectualism” on commerce and trade, the two nourishing lifebloods of our nation. Instead, I would refer all aspiring lawyers and barristers to the opinions of Justice Felix Frankfurter, whose father was a business colleague of mine until he shot himself, as a guiding model of judicial progress and stewardship. These days, we can see the degradation of our society and the American way of life as a whole in everything from the impudence of big band music, and its opium smoking flugelhorn players, to the cowardice of first year law associates, and their sense of job entitlement. Fear not. It is all nothing more than a phase, and it will be finished just as soon as we empty the Court of backwards-thinking hooligans, like Justice Stevens.
9
Where are these sexting stories you speak of. . . .?
-Bored at work
John Roberts hasn't hired ANY clerks.
Therefore, he'll probably retire this year, too.
Let me be the first to predict that many other people of Stevens' age who are still working are likely to retire or die in the next year.
28,
ATL has at least 3 staff members and an intern that I'm aware of.
It's really not all that odd to refer to a group doing something as "we." It's not as if he's doing it when he is the only person writing on the site.
Will their be pressure on Obama to pick a replacement who wears a bow tie?
This is an article about a marginal and unmemorable Supreme Court Justice who is mulling over retirement.
This story is not actually that important. But it has become trendy for young, pretentious-wanna legal minds to comment on it and pretend: (1) they have something worthwhile to say, and (2) this story will have some sort of huge impact on their lives.
I don't suggest holding your breath while you wait to see what comes next from Justice Stevens.
42
Ergo the request for sexting articles
I understand a legal degree is not required for the position. Obama should have some fun with it and nominate Al Gore, and let him rehash that Bush v. Gore case with his new colleagues.
Let us build John Paul Stevens a robotic exoskeleton, that he might live (and rule) forever!
I also <3 his bowties.
36 --
Well said. ATL suffers because the closing lines of Buck v. Bell were not heeded. Well past those 3 generations by now.
Keep up the priceless trope.
Maybe Obama will nominate another bigot.
The sexting news cycle was almost completely missed by ATL. The closest thing I can think of was that story about the lawyer's wife who found dirty text messages on the husband's phone and emailed his whole firm about it. The associate baseball game-strip club story was good also...or the drunk LLM at the company picnic. I can't remember enough details to give you links, though
-9
No one has pointed this out but it's funny that it just goes unquestioned in-house at ATL that if Lat is out of the office, stories about anything other than law firm gossip will not get published -- even if they're sitting there on the NYT front page for hours. (Obviously Elie was around and not also at NYU since he's been posting stories about layoffs all morning/afternoon.)
Here's a big ATL post on "sexting":
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/08/lawsuit_of_day_sexting_lady.php
Whatever: this isn't really a legal news site. Just a crappy gossip site.
Save us the self promotion. It is not enough for Lat to mention every single Google link to ATL. Now he has to mention the links that COULD have been made but weren't.
This ship be sinking?
Good job, 38. The journalists are looking at the change from prior hiring practice, not just the fact that Stevens has hired 1 clerk.
I'm really tempted to make a calculus analogy, but this stuff already seems way over your head.
@24 -- That's a great idea
40, Lat has been "we" since ATL got started. It became something of a running joke, as some uses of "we" very clearly referred to individual personal stuff. "We were in the same law school class as X"; "We bought a T-Shirt yesterday"; "We were the invited speaker at X conference."
The idea was--I think--that ATL was a media empire of sorts, not an attempt at gender-neutral political correctness.
Where will Obama find another judge with tax problems??
Maybe he'll appoint Rahm Emanuel, who will administer justice by sending dead fish to the non-prevailing party.
Now it's time for a black justice. A real black justice, not the uncle tom have now, sitting there silent during oral arguments. We need a Wise Sista. I would hope that a Wise Sista with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white man.
Also, I'm available to clerk for any Wise Sista that gets appointed to SCOTUS. But really, I'll even take job as their driver. Or I could just proof read their opinios, since I used to be an Editor in Chief of a legal blog, and my spelling and grammar skills are unparelleled.
Does anyone know what chocochino is? I'm afraid to push the chocochino button on the Flavia machine. If I push that button, does an alert pop up on the screen in the chairman's office? Have any of you had the guts to push the chocochino button? Are you still employed?
51 - You get the same response as 15. If you think ATL is "crappy," then don't read it.
xoxo,
16
i thought i read somewhere that stevens was going to try to pass the longevity mark of justice douglas. he'd only need to stay on the court until 2012 to become the longest service justice. also, i do remember reading somewhere that stevens considers himself a republican, and whatever disagreements he had with president bush, he wanted a republican to nominate his successor.
49 - Not true. I think Elie did most of the liveblogging of the Sotomayor hearings, for example.
Elie also writes about sports, which Lat knows nothing about, by Lat's own admission:
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/08/rick_pitino_samford_law_cumberland.php
54 - The "we" thing is just Lat's shtick / blogging trademark. He has never used the first person singular - not at his first blog, Underneath Their Robes, and not a Wonkette, where he worked before starting Above the Law.
It's just his style. Don't expect him to change it.
Re: Offers: How do people know what the offer rate for their summer class is? Is there any appropriate way to ask friends who were in the same summer class if they got offers? Inquiring minds want to know.
57, I have the same questions but dare not press the button.
If the first pick was a wise lady, the second pick must be a wide lady - Judge Halvorsen for SCOTUS!
Sounds like you were scooped by the AP on something right up your alley. You should have been on the ball, man!
Honestly these judges should be FORCED to retire at 75.
Same goes for some of these old man men deciding our destiny in Congress..
Peace. See yah.
Rumor is he is retiring because he cannot properly pronounce "Sotomayor." He wants to put an end to that social awkwardness as soon as possible.
57 - Justice Stevens knows exactly what happens if you push the chocochino button. And he intends to take that secret to his grave.
I've already called dibs on Stevens' CORNER office! Scalia was about to, but his jaw dropped when I smiled at him while licking the office doorknob.
Esta oficina es mío!
I had been hoping that Stevens would stay on the bench longer than Holmes. It would have been impressive, and also allowed for a lot of Holmes/Stevens jokes by nerdy law professors.
56 -
Thank you for serving up an example of the deep racism of so many political liberals today. A "real black" can only be a liberal, doncha know. Black men aren't allowed to think for themselves; they need to stay in their place as pawns of the Democratic Party and not get too uppity, right?
Such nonsense.
99% obama vote rate among blacks proves the racism
JPS is going to stay as long as humanly possible, IMO (beat Douglas/Holmes's records. Has he already passed Hugo Black?). My guess is that the one clerk is because he's worried about kicking the bucket and doesn't want to disappoint anyone. He also might be waiting to see how this term goes.
With the legal field as glutted as it is, shouldn't all 87 year olds holding legal positions retire, to make room for younger lawyers?
59, I have the same recollection.
72
Obama isn't a racist.
But a lot of liberals sure are. Anyone who says that someone must think a certain way because of skin color is racist. This is what many liberals said about Thomas when he was nominated, and it's what they're still saying (hence 56's comment, and any number of other comments regularly posted at ATL).
It's what they said about Condi Rice, too (just look at all the racist words and pictures that Daily Kos bloggers posted about her - calling her "house negro" was the least of it).
For many on the Left, it's all political. They're not actually against racism - they're just against the Right. And if they believe they have to use racist tactics to stop the Right, they'll do it freely. In fact, they'll do it even if they don't really believe they have to. They think anyone not on the Left is automatically bigoted.
- 71