Congratulations To The 2017 Bristow Fellows
Congratulations to the new fellows, their law schools, and their judges!
Chief Judge Merrick Garland will most likely never sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, but some things cannot be taken away from this great jurist. He will always have his amazing and enviable legal career to look back on, as well as his record of long and distinguished service to the federal judiciary and to the nation.
And, of course, he’ll always have his tremendous track record as a “feeder judge,” a judge who sends his clerks into Supreme Court clerkships — and also into Bristow Fellowships, the prestigious one-year fellowships in the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office whose holders often go on to SCOTUS clerkships. Over the past eight years, the period during which we’ve been tracking Bristow Fellows here at Above the Law, Chief Judge Garland has sent five clerks into Bristows — a reflection of both his keen eye for legal talent and the quality of training and mentoring he provides to his clerks. (He shares this honor with Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit — whose latest book, All Falling Faiths: Reflections on the Promise and Failure of the 1960s (affiliate link), hit shelves earlier this week.)
So we don’t know the identity of the next solicitor general (especially after Chuck Cooper’s surprising withdrawal from the process yesterday). But we do know the identity of the 2017 Bristow Fellows:
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Jo-Ann Karhson (Harvard / K.B. Jackson (D.D.C.) / Kavanaugh)
Michael Qian (Stanford / Garland)
Reema Shah (Yale / Srinivasan)
Maggie Upshaw (Chicago / Fletcher)
Congratulations to this fabulous foursome! And additional congrats to Jo-Ann Karhson, who will be clerking for Justice Breyer in October Term 2018, and Michael Qian, who will be clerking for Justice Ginsburg in October Term 2019.
If you’d like to follow in their footsteps someday, visit the Justice Department website to learn more about the Bristow Fellow application process, and flip to the next page to find out which law schools and judges have the strongest track records at producing Bristows. The Bristow Fellowship program continued during the last federal government hiring freeze, so presumably (and hopefully) it won’t be affected by the new hiring freeze.
P.S. If you follow the Twitter feed of @SCOTUSambitions, which offers (somewhat closer to) real-time coverage of Supreme Court clerkship hiring, you know that there have been several hires since our last round-up. A fresh round-up will come out soon; if you have info to share, please email us (subject line: “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring”). Thanks.
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Earlier: Breaking: Chuck Cooper Withdraws From The Solicitor General Sweepstakes!
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 dlat@abovethelaw.com.
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