Congratulations To The 2021 Bristow Fellows
Plus the law schools and lower-court judges producing the most Bristows.
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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, you can reach me by email at davidlat@substack.com, and you can register to receive updates on this signup page.
Here at Original Jurisdiction, I try to give you content that you can’t find anywhere else. Your inbox is full enough as it is; if I want you to subscribe, I know that I need to give you something different.
For example, take Supreme Court law clerk hiring. I don’t believe any other outlet covers SCOTUS clerk hiring in the granular, hire-by-hire way that I do. (Speaking of which, I’m working on another SCOTUS clerk hiring update; if you know of a hire that’s not mentioned in either my last hiring roundup or the @SCOTUSambitions Twitter feed, please email me at davidlat@substack.com, subject line “SCOTUS clerk hiring,” with the hire’s name, law school, and prior clerkship information.)
Another topic I cover that I don’t believe any other outlet covers: Bristow Fellow hiring. On that subject, congratulations to the five impressive young lawyers who have been awarded Bristow Fellowships, the prestigious one-year fellowships in the Office of the Solicitor General that allow their holders to practice before the Supreme Court just a year or two out of law school, for October Term 2021 (2021-2022):
Samir Doshi (Yale 2018 / Lohier / Moss (D.D.C.))
Abigail Frisch (Duke 2018 / Hayes (S.D. Cal.) / Willett)
David Goldman (UVA 2019 / Stras / Thapar)
Eve Levin (Columbia 2018 / Srinivasan / Oetken (S.D.N.Y.))
Yoni Marshall (Stanford 2019 / Bibas / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.))
Thanks to the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of Justice for providing their names, and thanks to you, my readers, for providing their law school and prior clerkship information. A few quick observations:
The 2021 class of Bristow Fellows is 60 percent male and 40 percent female — an improvement in terms of gender balance over the 2020 and 2019 classes, which were 80 percent male and 20 percent female.
The five fellows come from five different law schools, which is not unusual. The sense I have, from following Bristow hiring over the years, is that OSG tries to have some law-school diversity in hiring (see below for the 12 different law schools that have produced Bristow Fellows in recent years).
All five fellows did two clerkships, most with a district and a circuit judge (except for David Goldman, who clerked for two circuit judges).
Their judges are all “usual suspects” for this type of honor — high-profile, highly regarded judges, many of them also “feeder judges” for the Supreme Court (and many Bristow Fellows later go on to clerk for SCOTUS — e.g., Justice Brett Kavanaugh).
Yoni Marshall, whose full name is actually Jonathan J. Marshall, is the son of Stanford law professor Lawrence (Larry) Marshall, himself a former SCOTUS clerk (OT 1986/Stevens). There have been many parent-child SCOTUS clerk pairings over the years; the legal-genius apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Here are the law schools that have produced the most Bristow Fellows over the past 10 years (OT 2012 to OT 2021):
Yale - 10
Columbia - 5
UVA – 5
Stanford – 5
Chicago - 4
Harvard - 4
Northwestern - 3
Duke - 3
Georgetown
Michigan
Penn
Notre Dame
And here are the lower-court judges who sent clerks into Bristow Fellowships over the past decade (note that some Fellows clerked for more than one judge):
Wilkinson - 6
Garland - 5
Srinivasan - 5
Kavanaugh - 3
Kethledge - 3
Sutton - 3
Feinerman (N.D. Ill.) - 3
W. Fletcher - 2
Griffith - 2
Thapar - 2
Brinkema (E.D. Va.) - 2
Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) - 2
Bibas
Cabranes
Duncan
Katzmann
Livingston
Lohier
G. Lynch
Millett
Niemeyer
Owens
Scirica
J. Smith
Stras
Sykes
Tatel
Willett
Abrams (S.D.N.Y.)
Chhabria (N.D. Cal.)
Cote (S.D.N.Y.)
Furman (S.D.N.Y.)
Hayes (S.D. Cal.)
Huvelle (D.D.C.)
K.B. Jackson (D.D.C.)
Karas (S.D.N.Y.)
Moss (D.D.C.)
Pratter (E.D. Pa.)
M. Thompson (M.D. Ala.)
Finally, here are the 10 most recent classes of Bristow Fellows (43 Fellows in total):
2021 - 2022
Samir Doshi (Yale 2018 / Lohier / Moss (D.D.C.))
Abigail Frisch (Duke 2018 / Hayes (S.D. Cal.) / Willett)
David Goldman (UVA 2019 / Stras / Thapar)
Eve Levin (Columbia 2018 / Srinivasan / Oetken (S.D.N.Y.))
Yoni Marshall (Stanford 2019 / Bibas / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.))
2020 - 2021
Nicola Cohen (Columbia 2018 / Owens / Abrams (S.D.N.Y.))
Kyle Grigel (Stanford 2019 / Sutton)
Aaron Roper (Yale 2019 / Garland)
Yishai Schwartz (Yale 2018 / Cabranes / Karas (S.D.N.Y))
John Henry Thompson (Chicago 2018 / Sykes / Griffith)
2019 - 2020
Josh Halpern (Harvard 2017 / Smith / Millett)
Sean Janda (Stanford 2017 / Brinkema (E.D. Va.) / Srinivasan)
McKaye Neumeister (Yale 2017 / Srinivasan / Oetken (S.D.N.Y.))
John Ramer (Michigan 2017 / Kethledge)
Daniel Richardson (UVA 2018 / Wilkinson)
2018 - 2019
Meg Braun (Yale 2016 / Brinkema (E.D. Va.) / Katzmann)
Hunter Bruton (Duke 2016 / Duncan / Huvelle (D.D.C.))
Steve Lindsay (Yale 2017 / Griffith)
Adam Sorensen (UVA 2017 / Wilkinson)
2017 - 2018
Jo-Ann Karhson (Harvard / K.B. Jackson (D.D.C.) / Kavanaugh)
Michael Qian (Stanford / Garland)
Reema Shah (Yale / Srinivasan)
Maggie Upshaw (Chicago / Fletcher)
2016 - 2017
Julie Karaba (Northwestern / Kavanaugh / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.))
Chelsea Priest (Stanford / Garland)
Joseph Schroeder (U. Chicago / Wilkinson)
Jack Starcher (Columbia / Furman (S.D.N.Y.) / Srinivasan)
2015 - 2016
Lena Hughes (Columbia / Cote (S.D.N.Y.) / Lynch)
Laura Myron (Harvard / Wilkinson)
Parker Rider-Longmaid (Penn / Scirica / Pratter (E.D. Pa.))
Evan Rose (U. Chicago / W. Fletcher / Chhabria (N.D. Cal.))
2014 - 2015
Z. Payvand Ahdout (Columbia / Livingston)
Galen Bascom (UVA / Garland)
Samuel Harbourt (Harvard / Garland)
Jonathan Meltzer (Yale / Wilkinson)
2013 - 2014
Sarah Boyce (Duke / Sutton)
Travis Crum (Yale / Thompson / Tatel)
Elana Nightingale Dawson (Northwestern / Feinerman (N.D. Ill.) / Kethledge)
Ryan Snyder (Notre Dame / Kethledge)
2012 - 2013
Brinton Lucas (UVA / Wilkinson)
Daniel Taylor (Georgetown / Thapar (E.D. Ky.) / Sutton)
Julia Malkina (Yale / Kavanaugh)
Jonathan Shaub (Northwestern / Niemeyer)
If you see any errors in the listings above, please email me (davidlat@substack.com). Congratulations once again to the Bristow Fellows, their law schools, and their judges.
Earlier:
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