Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: The Liberals Start To Move

Plus an interesting new study about SCOTUS clerk hiring, and more clerks with family ties.

A clerk walking the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court (photo by David Lat).

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Last week’s oral arguments about The Future of the Internet, followed by this week’s oral argument about the Biden Administration’s student-loan forgiveness program, have reminded us of the obvious: the U.S. Supreme Court is very, very important. And so are the brilliant young lawyers who work with the nine justices as their law clerks, helping them craft the law of the land.

Before I take a temporary leave—as mentioned last weekend in Judicial Notice, I’ll be away next week—I thought I’d give you a quick SCOTUS clerk hiring update. My last roundup was in December, and there have been some new hires since then.

As you can see in the lists below, the new hires cluster on the left side of the Court. Justice Sotomayor completed her hiring for October Term 2023, while Justice Kagan completed her hiring for October Term 2024 (and even started hiring for October Term 2025). As usual, the liberal justices are hiring later than the conservatives—which is also the case in the lower courts, where many top Democratic-appointed feeder judges follow the Law Clerk Hiring Plan, and many top Republican-appointed feeder judges do not.

This difference in timing has at least one deleterious consequence in the lower courts: it promotes more “siloing” of conservatives and liberals, i.e., makes it less likely that a clerk might work with a right-of-center circuit judge and then a left-of-center district judge, or vice versa. Why? Because by the time the Democratic appointees are ready to hire, consistent with the Plan, their Republican-appointee colleagues, both district and circuit, are done hiring—which means that many applicants interested in double clerkships are done applying as well. This difference in timing reduces ideological diversity in chambers, which is unfortunate.

Before providing you with the lists of names, here are my usual miscellaneous musings about SCOTUS clerk hiring:

• In case you missed it—but you probably didn’t, since Adam Liptak covered it in the New York Times—three law professors have written an important new paper about Supreme Court clerkships. It’s titled Some Are More Equal Than Others: U.S. Supreme Court Clerkships, and it’s by Professors Tracey E. George (Vanderbilt), Albert Yoon (University of Toronto), and Mitu Gulati (University of Virginia).
  
  Liptak focused on the study’s findings about educational pedigree, in particular, how graduating from one of three elite undergraduate institutions—Harvard, Princeton, and Yale—dramatically increased one’s chances of landing a SCOTUS clerkship, even controlling for other variables (including law school and academic performance in law school). But the types of folks who read Original Jurisdiction will also appreciate the authors’ deep dive into the phenomenon of the “feeder judge.” Their bottom line: “Yes, Virginia, there are feeder judges” (i.e., it is indeed true that a small number of lower-court judges send a hugely disproportionate number of their clerks to the Supremes). Download the full paper via SSRN; it’s a fascinating read.

• Per his LinkedIn profile, Trevor Ezell, who clerked for Justice Gorsuch back in October Term 2020, has returned to One First Street, as of January 2023. Does anyone know why? Is he perhaps replacing a clerk who had to withdraw in the middle of the Term? Please drop me a line if you have information to share, and I’ll update this post on the web if and when I receive such info. (As my longtime readers know, although I do mention the identities of clerks who are entering and exiting in the middle of the Term, I generally don’t go into reasons, which tend to be personal—e.g., familial or medical.) [UPDATE (3:50 p.m.): I’m able to report that Tara Helfman will be leaving in order to care for an ailing parent, and Trevor Ezell will be replacing her in Justice Gorsuch’s chambers.]

• In my last hiring roundup, I alluded to possible shuffling among the Thomas clerks from Term to Term, and that has come to pass: Reid Coleman has been moved up to OT 2023, and Annie Wilson, originally slated for OT 2023, will clerk no earlier than OT 2024. As previously mentioned, Annie Wilson is married to Thomas Wilson, so I’m guessing she won’t be clerking in OT 2024, since that’s when her husband is scheduled to be clerking. But it’s not impossible—there’s no rule against it—and in that case, at least the Wilsons would be allowed to discuss SCOTUS cases with each other (unlike the clerks who confessed to Dobbs leak investigators that they had shared confidential case information with their spouses without authorization).

• In my March 2022 and December 2022 clerk hiring reports, I noted the importance of family ties, i.e., how it appears to help your chances of landing a SCOTUS clerkship if you are descended from or married to a past SCOTUS clerk. I failed to mention two other clerks with family ties.

• First, Claire Hungar (Yale 2023 / Thapar / Friedrich (D.D.C.)), clerking for Justice Kavanaugh in October Term 2025, is the daughter of Thomas Hungar, who clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and is now a partner at Gibson Dunn (after serving as both general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives and a deputy solicitor general). Justice Kavanaugh and Tom Hungar have several shared résumé items. Both graduated from Yale Law (1987 for Hungar and 1990 for Kavanaugh), clerked on the Ninth Circuit for then-Judge Alex Kozinski, and clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Kennedy (OT 1988 for Hungar and OT 1993 for Kavanaugh). They also served together on Justice Kennedy’s screening committee and interviewed me, years ago; alas, I did not advance to the stage of meeting Justice Kennedy. (I don’t remember much about the interview, but I do remember having an extended argument with them about Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Romer v. Evans, which I defended—since I was still a closet case back then—on jurisprudential rather than policy grounds. Did that make me seem too liberal?)

• Second, James Lee, clerking for Justice Alito in October Term 2023, is James Rex Lee—yes, that Rex Lee, the legendary litigator who served as 37th Solicitor General of the United States (1981-1985). Rex Lee clerked for Justice Byron White in October Term 1963. One of Rex’s Lee’s seven children, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), is the father of James Lee—and Senator Lee clerked for Justice Alito in October Term 2006. So both James Lee’s father and grandfather clerked for SCOTUS (and so did his uncle, former Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Rex Lee, who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas in October Term 1994).

• My SCOTUS clerk hires are crowdsourced, so I don’t always hear about them in real time; in fact, sometimes I don’t learn about hires until weeks or months after the fact. So when you see question marks in my lists below, please don’t assume that the justice has an opening. For example, I suspect that Justice Barrett has hired all four of her OT 2023 clerks and I’m just missing one, and I also suspect that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito might have hired more than just one clerk apiece for OT 2024.

• Upon information and belief, however, Justice Jackson has not made any OT 2023 hires yet, nor has Justice Breyer hired the one clerk for OT 2023 that he’s entitled to as a retired justice. So if you’re hoping to clerk for KBJ or SGB next Term, don’t give up hope just yet.

For paid subscribers to Original Jurisdiction, updated SCOTUS clerk hiring lists appear below. Thanks!