Clerkships, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Who Is NOT Retiring From SCOTUS?

Check out the latest Supreme Court clerk hiring action -- which offers a window into the justices' retirement plans.

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October Term 2014 was quite the Supreme Court Term — full of jiggery-pokery, shifts in identity, and marriage equality. (Speaking of which, if you’re a legal geek with nice arms, buy yourself this tank top — and support Lambda Legal in the process.)

If you’re looking to relive the highlights, there are lots of great retrospectives floating around. Many have been mentioned over at our sister site, How Appealing. For our Biglaw readers who want to know what the major cases mean for their corporate clients, check out MoloLamken’s Supreme Court Business Briefing.

Now we are well into July, and SCOTUS obsessives know what that means: changing of the guard at One First Street, as the incoming clerks arrive and the outgoing clerks depart (often for private practice and gigantic signing bonuses; we’re working on a story, so drop us a line if you have bonus info to share).

As they so kindly do around this time of year, our friends in the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office (PIO) shared with us the official list of incoming law clerks. This list does not include law school and prior clerkship information, which the PIO will release later this year, but it does confirm the accuracy of all the crowdsourced hiring information we have gathered on our own. You can access that list on the next page of this post.

Thanks to the official list, we now know the name of the “missing” clerk to Justice Thomas for OT 2015: Robert Leider. Since he’s the last clerk to be revealed, we will, consistent with our little tradition here at ATL, give him more detailed coverage than the other clerks. (This is the SCOTUS clerk version of the NFL draft’s Mr. Irrelevant.)

Leider is a 2012 graduate of the Yale Law School. He also holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown, and he taught philosophy at GW. He’s heading to the Court after a stint at Mayer Brown, source of this Google-cached bio:

Robert Leider is an associate in Mayer Brown’s Chicago office and a member of the Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice. Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Robert clerked for the Hon. Diane S. Sykes, of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and was an Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal and was awarded the Judge William E. Miller Prize for best student paper on the Bill of Rights.

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He seems to be a conservative sort, which isn’t shocking for a clerk bound for the Thomas chambers. He has worked with the Federalist Society, written for the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page (although note his criticism of George Zimmerman), and clerked for Judge Sykes, a leading light of the conservative judiciary. (One reader of Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link) asked me whether Judge Sykes inspired the character of Judge Stinson. Although there are some similarities — both are fabulous, highly regarded, conservative women judges, talked about as possible SCOTUS nominees — Judge Sykes is way nicer than Judge Stinson, a judicial diva of the first order.)

Now, on to the lists. A few quick observations:

1. Supreme Court clerk hiring offers clues into which justices are planning to stick around for a while. Retired justices get just one clerk each while active justices get four, and justices with retirement on their minds typically hire just one clerk until they’re sure they’ll be sticking around. Based on their hiring more than one clerk each for October Term 2016, it looks like Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan all plan on sticking around through the end of the 2016-2017 Term.

2. Justice Kagan seems to be the farthest ahead, with two clerks already hired for October Term 2017 (i.e., 2017-2018). She continues her streak of hiring almost exclusively from “HYS” (aka Harvard, Yale, and Stanford). In her entire time on the Court, she has had just one clerk not from those elite three schools, Ian Fein of Berkeley. (Go to this Wikipedia page and do a “find” for “Kagan.”)

3. In past SCOTUS clerk coverage, we’ve given shout-outs to notable “feeder judges” on the district courts, including Judge James E. Boasberg (D.D.C.) and Judge Gary Feinerman (N.D. Ill.). But let’s not forget the biggest trial-court feeder of them all, Judge Jed Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.). Together with his “tag team” partner, Chief Judge Robert Katzmann (2d Cir.), Judge Rakoff will have four clerks at One First Street over the next two Terms.

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Another fun, clerk-related tidbit about Judge Rakoff: in the first annual S.D.N.Y. “Courthouse Follies,” the private satirical show put on every holiday season at the court, he wrote and sang a delightful ditty entitled “A Modern Major Law Clerk” (to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “A Modern Major General”). You can check out the lyrics here.

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for: the latest and greatest Supreme Court clerkship hiring news. As always, if you have additions or corrections, please email us (subject line: “SCOTUS clerk hiring”) or text us (646-820-8477). Thanks!

OCTOBER TERM 2015 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of July 8, 2015)

Chief Justice John G. Roberts
1. Jake Brege (Michigan 2012 / Sentelle / Boasberg (D.D.C.))
2. Daniel Feith (Yale 2012 / Sullivan (S.D.N.Y.) / Griffith)
3. Ben Tyson (UVA 2014 / Srinivasan)
4. Katherine Booth Wellington (Harvard 2013 / Kavanaugh)

Justice Antonin Scalia
1. Sopan Joshi (Northwestern 2013 / Posner/ Feinerman (N.D. Ill.))
2. Michael Kenneally (Harvard 2011 / Gorsuch)
3. Taylor Meehan (Chicago 2013 / W. Pryor)
4. Jonathan Urick (UVA 2013 / Sutton / Thapar (E.D. Ky.))

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
1. Elana Nightingale Dawson (Northwestern 2011 / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.) / Kethledge / Bristow Fellow)
2. Samir Deger-Sen (Yale 2013 / Mollway (D. Haw.) / Kozinski)
3. Andrew Kilberg (UVA 2014 / Wilkinson)
4. C. Harker Rhodes IV (Stanford 2012 / Zobel (D. Mass.) / Katzmann)

Justice Clarence Thomas
1. Sarah M. Harris (Harvard 2009 / Lynch (1st Cir.) / Silberman)
2. Robert J. Leider (Yale 2012 / Sykes)
3. Marisa Maleck (Chicago 2011 / W. Pryor)
4. Scott G. Stewart (Stanford 2008 / O’Scannlain)

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Z. Payvand Ahdout (Columbia 2013 / Livingston / Bristow Fellow)
2. Josh Bone (Yale 2013 / Tatel)
3. Sam Harbourt (Harvard 2013 / Garland / Bristow Fellow)
4. Amy Marshak (NYU 2011 / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)

Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Galen Bascom (UVA 2013 / Garland / Bristow Fellow)
2. Tejas Narechania (Columbia 2011 / D. Wood)
3. Aaron Pennekamp (Georgetown 2013 / Sutton / Bates (D.D.C.))
4. Farah Peterson (Yale 2012 / Calabresi)

Justice Samuel Alito
1. Jonathan A. Berry (Columbia 2011 / Smith (5th Cir.))
2. Jim Ligtenberg (Yale 2010 / Wilkinson)
3. Barbara Smith Grieco (Stanford 2012 / Griffith)
4. Lucas Walker (Harvard 2009 / Gorsuch)

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
1. Easha Anand (Berkeley 2014 / Watford)
2. Nikolas Bowie (Harvard 2014 / Sutton)
3. Bridget Fahey (Yale 2014 / Kavanaugh)
4. Matt Shahabian (NYU 2011 / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)

Justice Elena Kagan
1. Yaira Dubin (Harvard 2013 / Srinivasan / Boasberg (D.D.C.))
2. Jeremy Feigenbaum (Harvard 2014 / Fletcher)
3. Thomas Fu (Stanford 2014 / Garland)
4. Jonathan Meltzer (Yale 2013 / Wilkinson / Bristow Fellow)

Justice John Paul Stevens (retired)
1. Gillian Grossman (Harvard 2014 / Kavanaugh)

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (retired):
1. Sarah Boyce (Duke 2012 / Sutton / Bristow Fellow)

Justice David H. Souter (retired):
1. Sam Rothschild (Columbia 2013 / Boudin / Cote (S.D.N.Y.))

OCTOBER TERM 2016 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of July 8, 2015)

Chief Justice John G. Roberts
1. Marguerite Colson (Yale 2015 / Kavanaugh)
2. Rachel Miller-Ziegler (Harvard 2015 / Garland)
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Antonin Scalia
1. Nicole Frazer (Virginia 2015 / Sutton)
2. Nick Harper (Chicago 2015 / Kavanaugh)
3. Greg Miller (Berkeley 2012 / Thapar (E.D. Ky.) / Carnes)
4. Sean Mirski (Harvard 2015 / Kavanaugh)

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
1. Alex Harris (Harvard 2015 / Gorsuch)
2. William Perdue (Yale 2011 / Katzmann / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.))
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Clarence Thomas
1. Austin Raynor (UVA 2013 / Wilkinson)
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Subash Iyer (NYU 2013 / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
2. Hajin Kim (Stanford 2014 / Watford)
3. Beth Neitzel (Stanford 2013 /D. Motz (4th Cir.) / Tatel)
4. Parker Rider-Longmaid (Penn 2013 / Scirica / Pratter (E.D. Pa.) / Bristow Fellow)

Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Daniel Herz-Roiphe (Yale 2015 / Garland)
2. Denise Lambert Drake (Stanford 2013 / Higginbotham / C. Breyer)
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Samuel Alito
1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
1. Tiffany Wright (Georgetown 2013 / Lamberth (D.D.C.) / Tatel)
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Elena Kagan
1. Elizabeth Bewley (Harvard 2015 / Griffith)
2. Gerard Cedrone (Harvard 2014 / Gorsuch)
3. Ben Eidelson (Yale 2014 / Garland)
4. ?

(A. Zoe Bedell (Harvard 2016 / Kavanaugh) and Ephraim McDowell (Harvard 2016 / Garland) have been hired for October Term 2017.)

Justice John Paul Stevens (retired)
1. ?

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (retired):
1. ?

Justice David H. Souter (retired):
1. ?

Do you know about a hire we haven’t reported yet, or do you have an addition or correction to any of this info? Please email us (subject line: “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring”) or text us (646-820-8477). Thanks!

(Flip to the next page if you’d like to view or download the U.S. Supreme Court’s official list of clerks. It doesn’t have as much information as our list above, but it does have the virtue of being official.)

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