Justice Clarence Thomas Wants You To Know His Law Clerks Aren't 'TTT' -- No Matter Where They Graduated From

His clerks are the most diverse, hailing from 23 law schools since 2005.

Justice Clarence Thomas

There are smart kids every place. They are male, they are female, they are black, they’re white, they’re from the West, they’re from the South, they’re from public schools, they’re from public universities, they’re from poor families, they’re from sharecroppers, they’re from all over. I look at the kid who shows up. Is this a kid that could work for me?

— Justice Clarence Thomas, offering his thoughts on hiring Supreme Court clerks during a speaking engagement at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Justice Thomas’s clerks are usually the most diverse, hailing from 23 law schools since 2005, with one-third of them having graduated from law schools outside the Top 10 on the U.S. News and World Report rankings. In fact, compared to the rest of his SCOTUS colleagues, 75 percent of Justice Thomas’s clerks have graduated from law schools other than Harvard and Yale. As Justice Thomas mused in the past, despite the law schools they may have come from, his clerks are not “TTT.”


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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