Supreme Court

Law Clerk Explains To Reporter That He Really Is Kind Of A Jerk

Gorsuch's clerk seems to hate working people as much as his boss.

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Michael Davis was an old SCOTUS clerk. He’s also, apparently, a f**king dickbag.

At least that’s the only conclusion one can draw from this profile by Tony Mauro in Supreme Court Brief. Perhaps the quotes Davis gave Mauro were inaccurate or failed to tell the whole story. That’s always possible. But at this moment in American history it seems like a good time to adopt the axiom that people mean what they say. At least when they’re talking to the media.

I’m 39 years old and I had my own law practice in Denver,” Davis said. “I was very happy. I went from making a comfortable living to a law clerk salary of $79,000 a year, and I had to abruptly shut down my law practice, including firing all my clients and firing my employees and contractors.

What?!?

So this guy fired all his employees and contractors to play act as a SCOTUS clerk for a couple of months? People he relied on for his livelihood got tossed into the unemployment line. Then he has the gall — the unmitigated gall — to quip about how hard it was to go from “making a comfortable living” to making $79,000 a year. That’s not much comfort to those employees who made a much, much less comfortable living — perhaps on $79,000 a year — that have to adjust to making ZERO a year to afford Davis the opportunity to live out his dream as a footnote in forging the anarchic hellscape that Fed Soc kids have wet dreams about.

The callousness Davis shows about his employees in this interview really underscores that total absence of reciprocity in the conservative philosophy on work. Employers need unquestioning fealty from the drones they pay minimum wage. The man Davis clerked for literally ruled that employees should die rather than betray their employer. But when it comes to taking a short jag at Uncle Neil’s Fantasy Constitution Camp there’s no need for loyalty to the people who’ve been supporting your “comfortable living.”

Again, maybe he found everyone a new job and paid each a generous severance package. Maybe. But even if we accept that Davis wants to be taken “seriously not literally,” it doesn’t change that he thought he’d sound “cool” to a reporter by bragging about pink slipping his staff, an impulse that only reinforces and feeds that culture of contempt for workers.

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Now I would also feel some professional qualms about his decision to fire his clients, but after reading his amicus brief in G.G. on behalf of “Public Safety Experts” which reads with all the constitutional and moral depth of a middle school locker room discussion, it’s hard to feel bad for them. Frankly his history as the legal voice of retrograde neanderthals might be a boon for him in his new job where, as Lat pointed out yesterday, he actually thinks Trump has done a good job with nominations:

Davis credits White House counsel Don McGahn for sending “really high quality constitutionalist, textualist, originalist judges from all over the country” to the Senate for judicial nominations.

Putting aside that all those adjectives are just buzzwords dumb people use to… well, prove that they’re dumb people to anyone with more than a third grade education (here’s where Scalia would say “argle-bargle” because it sounded brilliant in the Dr. Seuss book he read), one need not look further than Judge John Bush to realize this administration is really the glory days for the confederacy of dunces.

Heavy on the Confederacy.

From Private Practice to Gorsuch Clerk to Senate Staff: A Denver Lawyer’s Career Whirlwind [Supreme Court Brief]

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Earlier: The 40-Year-Old SCOTUS Clerk

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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