Justice Jackson's New Clerks Could Be Just What The Country Needs Right Now

Maybe I'll be selected next year.... :/

Senate Judiciary Committee Considers Nominations For Judges

(Photo by Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images)

The clerks are here! Ketanji Brown Jackson has hired her first round of clerks and her choices are very interesting. Given that several of her colleagues have gone on record speaking about the importance of bipartisanship and fairness while being anything but, it is nice to see that while Judge Jackson is new to this, she’s true to this.

Ketanji’s choices have also brought about a bit of diversity. One of her clerks, Kerrel Murray, is an associate professor at Columbia Law. This is a bit of a shake-up because while it is not unheard of for SCOTUS clerks to go on and teach at fancy schools, this is a bit of a reversal. Teaching at one of the best law schools in the nation will no doubt be of great help when it comes to polishing opinions — who better to make sure that the footnotes are neat than someone who teaches the cases to a room full of sleep-deprived 20-somethings? It is also a happy coincidence that Ketanji’s first clerk round pick ties her with the amount of Black clerks that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had over her 27 years on the Supreme Court.

Michael Qian’s addition to the clerk pool is very welcome. First, Qian graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a degree in Chemistry. I, and I assume many of us who got into law schools with bachelors in the humanities, have a great deal of respect for folks who have the brain power to excel in the hard sciences and pivot to the squishy, conceptual mire that is law. Not to mention that despite their overrepresentation in some of the top institutions in relation to population size, it is harder for Asian Americans to attain coveted positions in law. Hopefully Justice Jackson’s coworkers will take note and add a bit of color to their hiring practices; more diversity in SCOTUS clerks may help change the abysmal representation in our judiciary.

Again, congratulations to the new clerks!

Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: The Jackson Four [Davidlat.Substack]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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