Congratulations To The 2024 Bristow Fellows

There's a nice mix of law schools in this latest class, including one school that hasn't had a Bristow in a long time (if ever).

The Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice (photo by David Lat).

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I’m no longer a FOIA virgin. When I reached out to the Office of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to ask for the identities of the latest recipients of Bristow Fellowships—prestigious one-year fellowships at the DOJ’s Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) that allow attorneys to work on Supreme Court cases just a few years out of law school—I was told I had to submit a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

I found this odd; in years past, I received this information without having to proceed through FOIA. But I went through the motions of putting together a FOIA request, and now I have a FOIA template for the future. Yay!

If anyone has ideas for stuff I can go out and FOIA—journalists have done some amazing work using FOIA over the years—feel free to share. But please make sure that your request doesn’t fall under any of the many FOIA exemptions; I don’t want to waste my time requesting “[g]eological information on wells.”

[UPDATE (1:56 p.m.): Apologies—I’m not quite sure how this happened—but I just heard from the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA), and it appears that they did respond to my original media inquiry—very promptly, in fact—and supplied all the requested information (which is consistent with what’s reported below). For some reason, however, it appears that I never received—and still cannot find, even in my spam folder—the email they sent me, dated November 20, 2023. But they just forwarded me the email they sent me, to prove that it was sent, and I don’t see any typographical error in my address or any other reason it wouldn’t have reached me. Again, my apologies to OPA for any error on my end.]

[UPDATE (4:38 p.m.): Nor can I find the email telling me to proceed through a FOIA request—did I just imagine that? Did I decide to submit a FOIA request after (erroneously) thinking my initial inquiry had been ignored?]

As it turns out, my large and loyal network of sources gave me the Bristow info more quickly than my (still-pending) FOIA request.¹ And speaking of my wonderful tipsters, expect a Supreme Court clerk hiring update soon; if you know of any hires not contained in my last SCOTUS clerk hiring update, please email davidlat@substack.com, subject line “SCOTUS clerk hiring.”

Here are the Bristow Fellows for October Term 2024 (2024-2025):