Clarence Thomas

Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Meet Justice Thomas’s Clerks

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Justice Clarence Thomas — who tends to hire clerks from a wide range of law schools, including some schools far outside the so-called “T14″ — has had to defend himself against (unfounded) allegations that his clerks are “TTT” (an epithet so ridiculous it always makes us laugh). At the same time, because he’s the justice tasked with going to Capitol Hill to beg for money to testify in support of the SCOTUS budget request, he also has to defend the Court against charges of elitism in law clerk hiring, leveled by grandstanding lawmakers.

Hiring law clerks from Ivy League law schools: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

For this coming Term, October Term 2010, Justice Thomas has steered his chambers back in the direction of elitism. All of his clerks for OT 2010 hail from top schools.

So, who are they?

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Clarence Thomas Throws Fellow Justices, Feeder Judges, and Law Schools Under the Diversity Bus

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Today Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill to testify before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, regarding the Court’s budget. It started out jovially, with Justice Thomas poking fun at Justice Breyer for agreeing with him for the very first time (at the 15 minute mark, regarding taking questions from the committee).

But an hour in, things got testy between the congressmen and the justices. Josh Blackman brought to our attention that the issue of Supreme Court clerk diversity came up. Congressman Ander Crenshaw asked the Justices why the members of the Elect are overwhelmingly graduates from Yale and Harvard. He delicately asked if they’re more qualified or if there are a disproportionate number of them applying for clerkships.

This led to a fifteen-minute discussion about clerkship diversity that started with alma maters, then moved to ethnic diversity. In response, Thomas threw the other SCOTUS justices under the bus (e.g., “MY clerks are diverse”), then threw feeder judges under the bus, and then threw law schools under the bus (e.g., “that pool comes from the law schools”).

But then Congresswoman Barbara Lee hit him with the bus…

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An Amusing Oral Argument: Justice Thomas Opens His Mouth, and Justice Sotomayor Struggles With Math

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Sorry, we didn’t mean to get your hopes up (or maybe we did). The famously sphinx-like Justice Thomas did not ask a question at oral argument yesterday — but he did open his mouth and emit hearty laughs. From CNN:

Sometimes the most complicated of cases at the Supreme Court brings out the best arguments. It certainly brought out the giggles in a little-watched appeal Tuesday over federal prison terms.

The justices managed to crack themselves up — along with the public audience — at least a dozen times in the hour-long oral debate. Justice Clarence Thomas rarely speaks at the high court’s normally sober sessions, but he especially enjoyed the gentle insults and self-deprecating jibes his colleagues showered on each other. His booming laugh could be clearly heard at times.

So what gave CT a case of the chuckles during Barber v. Thomas?

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Mrs. Clarence Thomas Hosts Her Own Tea Party

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virginia ginni and clarence thomas.jpgWhen we’ve heard in the past about Virginia Lamp Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, it was usually as his fellow RV road warrior. But Ginni Thomas is now much more high-profile. The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that she has launched Liberty Central Inc., a conservative non-profit inspired by the Tea Party movement.

From the organization’s website:

LibertyCentral.org will serve the big tent of the conservative movement and assist all viable individuals and organizations with education and engagement. The site’s primary focus will be on emerging and new citizen activists – helping them discover a viable path to effective and efficient activism, along with an understanding of why their participation matters in accordance with founding principles and limited Constitutional governance.

Experts tell the L.A. Times that Thomas’ work doesn’t violate ethical rules for judges, but that it could give rise to conflicts of interest for her husband.

People are already pointing out that the 5-4 decision in Citizens United cleared the way for Liberty Central to fill its coffers with corporate cash.

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Clarence Thomas Clarifies: His Clerks Aren’t ‘TTT’

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Clarence Thomas portrait Justice Clarence Thomas.jpgPerhaps to avoid the snowpocalypse in D.C., Justice Clarence Thomas went down to the Sunshine State this week, where he spent time speaking with law students at Stetson University and the University of Florida.

Though he’s the sphinx of the High Court, Justice Thomas is loquacious when not in oral arguments. He’s an engaging speaker: personable, genuine, funny.

Though we cringed watching video from his Thursday talk at the University of Florida. He talked about the elitism in SCOTUS clerk hiring and complained about “smart bloggers” — or “self-proclaimed smart bloggers” — labeling his clerks “TTT” last year. “That’s the attitude that you’re up against,” he told the UF law students.

We hope that comment was not inspired by these pages. In 2008, CT’s law clerks came from George Mason, Rutgers, George Washington, and Creighton law schools. If there were any “TTT” references to them here, they were in the comments section and did not come from our “smart” mouths, er, fingers. (Reader comments should not be confused with ATL editorial comment; this is why we hide the comments, for your protection.)

We worship The Elect, regardless of alma mater. Lat has been heaping slavish adoration at the feet of SCOTUS clerks since 2004.

More thoughts from Justice Thomas on clerk hiring, paying off his student loan debt, and law firm layoffs, after the jump.

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Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Justice Sotomayor
(Plus info about Justice Thomas for OT 2010.)

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Supreme Court hallway Above the Law Above the Law Above the Law.JPGThe complete, official list of Supreme Court clerks for October Term 2009 — i.e., the clerks who recently arrived at One First Street — will be released by the Public Information Office shortly, perhaps by the end of this week. We’ve previously listed many of the Court’s OT 2009 law clerks in these pages.
But we didn’t name all of them. Our list didn’t include the hires of newly confirmed Justice Sonia Sotomayor. We understand that Justice Sotomayor has hired all of her clerks for OT 2009 — which makes sense, since she has a lot of work to tackle before the official start of the Term — but no clerks yet for OT 2010. Her OT 2009 clerks started working at the Court yesterday.
We think we know three out of four of them — but we’re not sure. We also have some info about Justice Clarence Thomas’s clerk hiring, but we need to fill in some blanks.
Can you help us?
UPDATE: We think we have all four Sotomayor clerks now. ¡Gracias!

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(Plus info about Justice Thomas for OT 2010.)“

Morning Docket 06.03.09

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Clarence Thomas portrait Justice Clarence Thomas.jpg* Justice Clarence Thomas cut SCOTUS to go speak to a high school’s graduating class. [NBC Washington]
* The Second Circuit puts the brake on the Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings. [Washington Post]
* Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: New York judges get a vote ruling of confidence in their request for a salary increase. [New York Law Journal]
* Dan Slater wonders whether Morgan & Finnegan’s dissolution is proof that the end is nigh for IP boutique firms. [IP Law & Business]
* The mark of Rove in the DOJ? [True/Slant]
* Delivery woman brings a Miami-Dade prosecutor a pizza. Prosecutor greets her with a knuckle sandwich. [NBC Miami]

Is Justice Thomas ‘A Little Tired’ of His Job?
(He has hired his clerks. Who are they?)

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Clarence Thomas portrait Justice Clarence Thomas.jpgIn today’s Morning Docket, we linked to an interesting article, by Adam Liptak of the New York Times, concerning a recent public appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas before a group of high school essay contest winners. The WSJ Law Blog collects a number of fun tidbits — such as Justice Thomas’s declaration that “the dishwasher is a miracle,” and his weakness for Saving Private Ryan.

This passage caught our eye:

“I am rounding the last turn for my 18th term on the court,” [Justice Thomas] added, but his work — “this endeavor,” he called it, “or, for some, an ordeal” — has not gotten easier.

“That’s one thing about this job,” he said. “You get a little tired.”

So does this mean that Justice Thomas might retire? CT is usually silent on the bench; he doesn’t seem to enjoy the intellectual combat of oral argument, a la Justices Scalia or Breyer. One wonders whether he might be happier driving around in his RV, which is how he passes his summers, than hanging out at One First Street, cranking out opinions.

But don’t expect CT to step down anytime soon. He’s still just 60 years old — he turns 61 on June 23 — which makes him a spring chicken by SCOTUS standards. He sees his service on the Court as a great honor and civic calling, as he explained in his superb memoir, My Grandfather’s Son. He’s also quite good at his job: no matter what Senator Harry Reid might say, Justice Thomas is widely regarded as a fine craftsman of judicial opinions (including many in highly technical statutory fields).

Oh, and Justice Thomas has hired clerks for October Term 2009. Now, clerk hiring evidence is not conclusive; some justices warn their hires that they might retire at any time. But since it would be cruel and unusual punishment to bestow a SCOTUS clerkship on someone and then take it away, hiring clerks is certainly suggestive of an intention to stay (just like bulk conference room reservations, by the “Office of Attorney Development,” are circumstantial evidence of looming lawyer layoffs).

More on the subject of Supreme Court clerk hiring, after the jump.

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(He has hired his clerks. Who are they?)”

Clearly He Is Trying To Set An Unbreakable Record

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Clarence Thomas 2 Justice Clarence Thomas Above the Law blog.jpgFor his yearbook page, one of our most quiet high school classmates selected this quotation, by Martin Fraquhar Tupper: “Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.”
Justice Clarence Thomas concurs. As reported by the AP, “[t]wo years and 142 cases have passed since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last spoke up at oral arguments.”
So what if the “time[]” of CT’s “well-timed silence” has dragged on for two years? Holly Hunter was mute for two hours in The Piano — and she snagged herself an Oscar!
Thomas: No Questions in 2 Years [AP]

The Eyes of the Law: Justice Scalia at Georgetown

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Our latest legal celebrity sighting: Justice Antonin Scalia, spotted at Georgetown University Law Center. He is believed to have been at GULC to speak to a con law class.
Of the current justices on the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia clearly inspires the greatest amount of fanatical devotion. How many other justices have their own fansite?
(Okay, Justice Thomas has one too. And with his new, bestselling memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, he’s definitely building a fan base. But we still think that Justice Scalia has the most groupies of any member of the SCOTUS.)
And how many other justices are asked to sign students’ laptop computers? This student, who had his laptop autographed by AS, was proudly displaying his computer to his classmates, saying that he felt Scalia had “blessed” his laptop for the upcoming exams.
autograph laptop Justice Antonin Scalia Above the Law blog.jpg
With such a large and devoted following, we have a feeling that Justice Scalia’s forthcoming book — Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, a guide to persuasive legal writing and oral advocacy, which he’s writing together with legendary legal writing teacher Bryan Garner — will sell pretty well too.
Scalia to Join Supreme Court Book Club [Legal Times]

A Night at the Federalist Society Birthday Bash

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Alex Kozinski David Lat.jpgWe now yield the floor to Laurie Lin. Who better to report on one of the year’s biggest social events than the writer of Legal Eagle Wedding Watch? Over to you, Laurie.
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Ambition and Old Spice wafted sweetly through the air last night at the Federalist Society’s 25th Anniversary Gala at Union Station — a kind of right-wing Golden Globes. Nearly two thousand G-ed up conservative lawyers packed the main hall to hear President George W. Bush blast the Senate on judicial confirmations:

“Today, good men and women nominated to the federal bench are finding that inside the Beltway, too many interpret ‘advise and consent’ to mean ‘search and destroy,’” Bush said.

Tickets to the black-tie affair were $250 — actually $249, because there was a new $1 Madison coin at every place setting — but that was a small price to pay to breathe the same oxygen as Ted Olson, Antonin Scalia, and Laura Ingraham.
More on the conservative legal fabulosity — including pictures of the people who didn’t hide when they saw us coming — after the jump.

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Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2008 (Update #7)

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aileen mcgrath aileen marie mcgrath jason gillenwater jason e gillenwater.jpgIn October 2006, when LEWW reviewed her wedding, we wrote of Aileen McGrath (at right, with handsome hubby Jason Gillenwater):

Aileen is the President of the Harvard Law Review. HELLO!!! And this isn’t mentioned in the announcement, but we’ve learned that she’ll be clerking next year for Chief Judge Michael Boudin, of the First Circuit — feeder judge extraordinaire.

So, Aileen, have you picked which Supreme Court justice you’d like to clerk for?

She has. We’ve learned that Aileen McGrath (Harvard 2007 / Boudin) has accepted an offer to clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer in October Term 2008. One source tells us: “[S]he’s universally recognized as brilliant. She was president of the law review and a Sears Prize winner.”
We also hear that the fourth clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas for OT 2008 is a D.C. Circuit clerk (believed to be clerking for Judge David Sentelle). Will someone please give up the name?
Update: Her name is Claire Evans. She’s a 2002 graduate of Rutgers School of Law – Camden, and she’s the first alum of the school to score a SCOTUS clerkship. She clerked for Judge Jerome Simandle (D.N.J.) in 2003, and then for Michael Chertoff, back when he was still on the Third Circuit. Reports our source:

“Chertoff liked Claire so much that he took her to the Department of Homeland Security when he left the bench for Washington. Apparently, Claire continues to amaze and has now secured the most coveted of credentials — a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship.”

“[S]he holds the highest cumulative grade point average in the history of Rutgers School of Law – Camden. And, because of a grading change implemented the year after Claire graduated, it is now mathematically impossible for Claire’s epic GPA to ever be topped.”

Finally, expect more SCOTUS clerk hires in the near future. From an in-the-know tipster:

There’s movement among the justices now. At least Alito, Roberts, Kennedy & Breyer have scheduled interviews in the last few days. Kennedy has scheduled pre-screen interviews, at least some of which are with Judge Kozinski.

The current tally of OT 2008 Supreme Court clerks, with Aileen McGrath and Claire Evans added, appears after the jump.

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