Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: October Term 2017 Is Filling Up Fast
All the justices are done hiring for next Term, except for one -- can you guess who?
We’re still operating with a Supreme Court below full strength — and that probably won’t change for a while. Even though President-elect Donald Trump has promised to name a nominee “pretty soon,” it would take months for that person to be vetted, go through confirmation hearings, win the Senate vote, and join the Court. Indeed, Jeffrey Toobin predicts that Trump’s nominee won’t join the Court before the end of this Term (October Term 2016).[1]
The Supreme Court itself might have a vacancy for a while, but the roster of SCOTUS clerks for next Term, October Term 2017, is filling up fast. By our count, seven of the eight sitting justices have completed their OT 2017 hiring. The only one who hasn’t hired up is Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. (Retired Justice David H. Souter also might have a vacancy, but he typically moves late — even when he was an active justice, he was often the last to hire.)
Ah, Justice Kennedy. Although the Court’s Public Information Office offered a (rather persuasive in my view) rebuttal to the rumors of an AMK retirement in OT 2017, the speculation persists.
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What might nip that speculation in the bud? Hiring more than one clerk. As of now, Justice Kennedy has just a single clerk on the OT 2017 roster, Nick Harper (originally hired by the late Justice Antonin Scalia). As a retired justice, AMK would be entitled to one clerk, so hiring Harper doesn’t say anything about the justice’s future plans. (Clerks to retired justices help their bosses with various projects — speeches, books, hearing cases in the circuit courts — and also get “farmed out” to active justices, where they work on pending cases alongside the other clerks.)
We have heard rumors of Justice Kennedy conducting clerk interviews — the justice himself, not just his screening committee — so perhaps we’ll hear of hires soon. If he does hire four clerks for OT 2017, that would be a strong sign that he’s sticking around. It would be rather cruel of AMK to hire three clerks just to cover up his retirement plans, and Justice Kennedy is anything but cruel.
UPDATE (12/23/2016, 11:20 a.m.): We have learned that Justice Kennedy has hired two clerks in addition to Harper, for a total of three, and he will hire the fourth early next year. So folks fearing (or hoping) that President-elect Trump would get to replace AMK in short order should be relieved (or disappointed). We think we have these clerks’ identities, but please drop us a line if you can confirm them for us.
Our list of October Term 2017 law clerks appears below. We also hear that some justices have started hiring for October Term 2018, but we don’t have confirmed names yet. Once we get a few, we’ll start a list for OT 2018, which we’ll include in the next round-up post. (As we’ve mentioned before, if you don’t want to wait until that post for SCOTUS clerk hiring news, follow the @SCOTUSambitions Twitter feed, which reports hires in real time.)
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If you have any corrections to the information appearing below, or if you have any hiring news we have not yet reported, please reach out by email or text (646-820-8477). Please include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, perhaps as the subject line of your email or the first words of your text, because that’s how I locate these tips in my (overwhelmed) inbox. Thanks!
[1] What does the future hold for Chief Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s unsuccessful SCOTUS nominee? Will Judge Garland go back to hearing cases on the D.C. Circuit — and feeding clerks like mad to the Supremes — or would remaining on the bench, so close and yet so far from One First Street, be too painful for him? Note that he will satisfy the “Rule of 80” when he turns 65 next November, meaning that he’ll be eligible to retire or take senior status and still get his current salary. Judge Garland’s colleague, Judge Douglas Ginsburg, stuck around the D.C. Circuit after his SCOTUS nomination went up in smoke, but Judge Robert Bork peaced out after his own nomination fell victim to politics. So there’s precedent for either path.
OCTOBER TERM 2017 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of December 22, 2016)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts
1. Usha Chilukuri Vance (Yale 2013 / Thapar (E.D. Ky.) / Kavanaugh)
2. Charlie Dameron (Yale 2015 / Kethledge)
3. Caroline Flynn (Michigan 2013 / Flaum / Srinivasan)
4. Aaron Rizkalla (Harvard 2016 / Wilkinson)
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
1. Nick Harper (Chicago 2015 / Kavanaugh)
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
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Justice Clarence Thomas
1. Gilbert Dickey (Chicago 2012 / W. Pryor
2. Brittney Lane (Pepperdine 2012 / O’Scannlain / Sutton)
3. Greg Miller (Berkeley 2012 / Thapar (E.D. Ky.) / Carnes)
4. Cameron Norris (Vanderbilt 2014 / W. Pryor / Henderson)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Beatrice C. Franklin (Columbia 2014 / Furman (S.D.N.Y.) / Carney)
2. Karim Kentfield (Berkeley 2012 / Fletcher / Srinivasan)
3. Mary Schnoor (Harvard 2016 / Posner)
4. Emma Simson (Yale 2013 / Boasberg (D.D.C.) / Tatel)
Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Cynthia Barmore (Stanford 2015 / Griffith)
2. Carlton Forbes (Yale 2014 / Lohier / Pillard)
3. David Fox (GW 2012/ Barron)
4. Maggie Goodlander (Yale 2016/Garland)
Justice Samuel Alito
1. Sean Mirski (Harvard 2015 / Kavanaugh)
2. Kevin Neylan (Harvard 2015 / O’Scannlain)
3. Stephen Petrany (Yale 2014 / W. Pryor)
4. James Saywell (Ohio State 2014 / McKeague / Sutton)
Justice Sonia Sotomayor
1. Elizabeth Graber Bentley (Harvard 2013 / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
2. Carmen Iguina Gonzalez (NYU 2010 / Matsumoto (E.D.N.Y.) / Reinhardt)
3. Ray Tolentino (Georgetown 2012 / McKeown / Matsumoto (E.D.N.Y.) / Pillard)
4. Julie Veroff (Yale 2015 / Berzon / Boasberg (D.D.C.))
Justice Elena Kagan
1. A. Zoe Bedell (Harvard 2016 / Kavanaugh)
2. Lena Husani Hughes (Columbia 2012 / Cote (S.D.N.Y.) / G. Lynch)
3. Jeremy Kreisberg (Harvard 2014 / Reinhardt)
4. Ephraim McDowell (Harvard 2016 / Garland)
Justice John Paul Stevens (retired)
1. Donald Goodson (NYU 2013 / Nathan (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
Justice David H. Souter (retired):
1. ?
Do you know about a hire not previously reported, or do you have an addition or correction to any of this info? Please share what you know by email or text (646-820-8477). Please include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, as the subject line of your email or the first words of your text, because that’s how I locate these tips in my inundated inbox. Thanks!
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Earlier: Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Send Us Your Tips (Plus An Updated Official Clerk List)
Anatomy Of A Rumor: On Justice Kennedy’s ‘Retirement’ Next Year
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].
