Courts, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks

Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: New Year, New Hires

And some justices have already hired all their 2019-2020 clerks as well.

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Supreme Court Clerk Hallway originalHappy new year! And what better way to kick off 2018 than with a new installment of Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch?

In case you missed it during the hectic holiday season, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy recently hired a full set of four clerks for October Term 2018 (i.e., 2018-2019). This might mean that Justice Kennedy, the longtime subject of retirement rumors (which he’s even joked about), is sticking around. Or it might not — because we’re talking about the hard-to-predict AMK, who’s a Supreme Court justice and can do as he pleases.

Before sharing with you the names of the newest members of the Elect, here are my customary miscellaneous observations of possible interest to folks who follow SCOTUS clerk hiring:

1. In case you missed it, Tony Mauro and the National Law Journal recently put out a detailed analysis of the diversity — or lack thereof — among Supreme Court clerks. Check it out here (overview) or here (full findings), or read my colleague Kathryn Rubino’s write-up here.

2. As you’ll see below, there are now two different lists compared to the last SCOTUS clerk hiring post. One is for October Term 2018, and one is for October Term 2019. We now have a critical mass of OT 2019 hires to justify a separate listing for them.

3. In fact, upon information and belief, all nine justices have finished their OT 2018 hiring, even though we’re missing the names of a few hires for Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Gorsuch. Furthermore, rumor has it that Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch have even finished their OT 2019 hiring.

(A friendly reminder: by Above the Law tradition, the last SCOTUS clerk whose hiring we learn about gets their own special profile in ATL’s pages, our version of the NFL draft’s Mr. Irrelevant.)

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4. Chief Justice Roberts has even made a hire for October Term 2019, a Harvard Law School graduate named Zaki Anwar. One can see why Anwar would be appealing to JGR: Anwar graduated at the top of his class (Fay Diploma) from the Chief’s alma mater. And not only that, Anwar graduated summa cum laude, which is an especially big deal because in many years, HLS has no summa graduate. (Chief Justice Roberts and President Barack Obama were mere magna grads.)

UPDATE (7:50 p.m.): Looks like HLS is getting soft! From a Harvard Law source:

A minor correction for you. It’s no longer true that there are years at HLS without a summa graduate. There used to be a numerical cutoff, then for I think one year it was awarded to the top 1%, and now there’s a numerical cutoff again, but if no one hits the cutoff then the number one ranked graduate is designated summa. (Seemed like an odd policy when I heard about it, since you already have the Fay Diploma to recognize the number one graduate.)

See here for details: http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/ocs/employers/hls-grading-policy/

5. One interesting finding of the NLJ survey is that the top 19 feeder judges are responsible for more than two-thirds of all SCOTUS clerks. I’m actually surprised it’s not higher. If you look at the two lists below, you’ll see all the usual suspects (shout-out to my awesome former boss, Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the Ninth Circuit).

6. By my count — if I’m wrong, about this or anything else, please email me (subject line: “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring”) — 13 judges have at least two of their clerks on the lists below. I’ll refer to these judges just by their last names and with no mention of their courts because, to SCOTUS clerkship obsessives, feeder judges are like Beyoncé — a single name suffices. The 13 judges are as follows (in alphabetical order, with number of clerks placed so far in parentheses): Feinerman (3), Garland (4), Griffith (2), Katzmann (2), Kavanaugh (6!), Nathan (2), Oetken (2), Srinivasan (4), Sullivan (2), Sutton (3), Tatel (2), Watford (2), and Wilkinson (2).

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UPDATE (1/8/2018): Make that 14 judges — Judge Michelle Friedland (9th Cir.) should be added to the list, based on the update to Nick Rosellini’s prior clerkship information below. Judge Friedland is, like every judge on the list except for Judge Griffith and Judge Sullivan, a former SCOTUS clerk herself.

7. One notable omission from that list of 13 is Judge Alex Kozinski, the mega-feeder who recently retired from the Ninth Circuit. But even though Judge Kozinski is no longer on the bench, his former clerks should continue to appear on these lists for some time.

Why? First, people often end up clerking for SCOTUS several years after their first clerkship(s). If you’re serious about clerking for SCOTUS, you should apply multiple times; sometimes the third (or fourth, or fifth) time is the charm.

Second, word on the street is that several of the Kozinski clerks whose clerkships got interrupted, or who never got to start with the judge in the first place, have found new and excellent homes with freshly minted superstars of the federal bench like Judge Gregory Katsas (D.C. Cir.) and Judge James Ho (5th Cir.). Look for Katsas and Ho to emerge as feeders in the future, especially when it comes to placing clerks in the chambers of their former boss, Justice Clarence Thomas.

8. Speaking of people clerking for SCOTUS well after their first clerkships, Justice Gorsuch appears to be continuing his tradition of hiring older, more experienced clerks, at least for his early Terms. (But for October Term 2019, he’s hired two 2017 graduates so far, which is pretty typical.)

For OT 2018, NMG has hired at least two people who graduated from law school about a decade ago, Ethan Davis (Yale 2008 / O’Scannlain) and Paul Mezzina (Harvard 2008 / Kavanaugh / Scalia). Mezzina is currently a partner in the D.C. office of King & Spalding, and Davis was a partner in the firm’s San Francisco office until fairly recently. (In June 2017, Davis left K&S to become a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.)

Okay, enough of my ramblings — let’s see some names! For hard-core SCOTUS clerkship junkies who want closer to real-time updates on SCOTUS clerk hiring, follow @SCOTUSambitions on Twitter.

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!

OCTOBER TERM 2018 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of January 4, 2018)

Chief Justice John G. Roberts
1. Evelyn Blacklock (Harvard 2016 / Sullivan (S.D.N.Y.) / Kavanaugh)
2. Cole Carter (Harvard 2016 / Sutton / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.))
3. Julie Karaba Siegal (Northwestern 2014 / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.) / Kavanaugh / Bristow)
4. Mike Clemente (Yale 2016 / Hamilton / Griffith)

UPDATE (1/9/2018): Julie Karaba, as she was listed in my July 2017 hiring roundup, is now Julie Siegal. Congratulations and best wishes to her and her husband, Peter Siegal! If only we still had Legal Eagle Wedding Watch in our pages….

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
1. Aimee Brown (Chicago 2014 / Griffith)
2. Alex Kazam (Yale 2016 / Kethledge / Sullivan (S.D.N.Y.))
3. Clayton Kozinski (Yale 2017 / Kavanaugh)
4. Conrad Scott (Yale 2015 / Watford / Garaufis (E.D.N.Y.))

Justice Clarence Thomas
1. Kathryn Kimball (U. Florida 2012 / W. Pryor / Moody (M.D. Fl.))
2. Christopher Mills (Harvard 2012 / Sentelle)
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Katie Barber (UVA 2015 / Brinkema (E.D. Va.) / Owens)
2. Rachel Bayefsky (Yale 2015 / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
3. Rebecca Lee (Yale 2016 / Wilkinson / Moss (D.D.C.)
4. Matt Rubenstein (Yale 2014 / Gwin (N.D. Oh.) / Tatel)

Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Will Havemann (Stanford 2013 / Motz)
2. Jo-Ann Karhson (Harvard 2014 / K.B. Jackson (D.D.C.) / Kavanaugh)
3. Janine Lopez (Harvard 2014 / Garland)
4. Alec Schierenbeck (Stanford 2015 / Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) / Tatel)

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

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
1. Samiyyah Ali (Vanderbilt 2016 / Thapar (E.D. Ky.) / Srinivasan)
2. Michael Skocpol (Stanford 2016 / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.) / Pillard)
3. Rachel Wilf-Townsend (Yale 2017 / Garland)
4. Michael Zuckerman (Harvard 2017 / K.N. Moore)

Justice Elena Kagan
1. Robert Niles (Harvard 2016 / Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) / Tatel)
2. Ashley Robertson (Stanford 2016 / Srinivasan / Boasberg (D.D.C.))
3. Zach Savage (NYU 2013 / Scirica / Furman (S.D.N.Y.))
4. Reema Shah (Yale 2015 / Srinivasan / Bristow Fellow)

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch

1. Ethan Davis (Yale 2008 / O’Scannlain)
2. Paul Mezzina (Harvard 2008 / Kavanaugh / Scalia)
3. ?
4. ?

Justice John Paul Stevens (retired)
1. Sarah Sloan (Columbia 2016 / Friedland / Nathan (S.D.N.Y.))

Justice David H. Souter (retired):
1. Sundeep Iyer (Yale 2016 / Kavanaugh)

OCTOBER TERM 2019 SUPREME COURT CLERK HIRES (as of January 4, 2018)

Chief Justice John G. Roberts
1. Zaki Anwar (Harvard 2017 / Sutton / Srinivasan)
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Clarence Thomas
1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Alyssa Barnard (Columbia 2015 / Nathan (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
2. Marco Basile (Harvard 2015 / Watford / Barron)
3. Susan Pelletier (Harvard 2016 / Garland)
4. Michael Qian (Stanford 2016 / Garland / Bristow Fellow)

Justice Stephen G. Breyer
1. Nicholas Rosellini (Stanford 2016 / C. Breyer (N.D. Cal.) / Friedland / Cuellar (Cal.))
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

UPDATE (1/8/2018): Nick Rosellini’s prior clerkship information has been revised to add his clerkships for Judge Friedland (9th Cir.) and Justice Cuellar.

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

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Elena Kagan
1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch

1. Trevor Ezell (Stanford 2017 / Sutton)
2. Kelly Holt (Chicago 2017 / Wilkinson)
3. ?
4. ?

UPDATE (1/8/2018): Actually, Trevor Ezell will be clerking for Justice Gorusch in OT 2020. It looks like NMG has hired quite far into the future.

Justice John Paul Stevens (retired)
1. ?

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!

Mostly White and Male: Diversity Still Lags Among SCOTUS Law Clerks [National Law Journal]
Shut Out: SCOTUS Law Clerks Still Mostly White and Male [National Law Journal]
Scalia in the Casebooks [SSRN]
Supreme Ambitions [Amazon (affiliate link)]

Earlier:

DBL square headshotDavid Lat is editor at large and founding editor of Above the Law, as well as 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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