SCOTUS Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2025 And Beyond

Will Justices Thomas or Alito retire under Trump? I’m betting against it.

A clerk walking the halls of One First Street (photo by David Lat).

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.

---

It’s hard to believe, but the current Term of the U.S. Supreme Court—October Term 2024, in SCOTUS parlance—is almost over. We’re presumably done with oral arguments—last week’s arguments in the birthright-citizenship cases constituted a special session—and now we’re just waiting for opinions to come down (or not come down, as the case might be).

Here’s something else I’ve been waiting for: the names of the law clerks for October Term 2025 that I’m still missing. That class of clerks will report for duty at One First Street in July, a little more than a month away, and I’m still missing five clerks: three for Justice Alito and two for Justice Barrett. (I’m already aware of Michael Bradley, Kate Hardiman Rhodes, and Matt Phillips.)

Does this mean that Justices Alito and Barrett still have open slots for OT 2025? No; to the contrary, I’m reliably informed that they have filled their slots for the upcoming Term, but I don’t have the names of these five clerks yet. Can you help me out? If so, please email me, at davidlat@substack.com, or text me, at 917-397-2751 (texts only—no calls). Please include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, perhaps as the subject line of your email or the first words of your text.

Before turning to the lists of clerk names, here’s some color commentary:

• I believe that all nine active justices have hired all their clerks for OT 2025—and looking ahead, five out of nine have hired at least one clerk for OT 2026 (everyone except Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Barrett, and Jackson). In addition, three justices—Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—have hired at least one clerk for OT 2027.

• As I’ve mentioned before, analyzing clerk hiring patterns foreshadowed the retirements of Justices O’Connor, Souter, and Stevens. And while it isn’t a foolproof indicator—Justice Kennedy hired a full complement of clerks, then peaced out (and those hires got placed with other justices)—clerk hiring can be suggestive. So I’d say that Justice Alito hiring four clerks for OT 2025—as I’ve been told he has, even though I’m missing the names—provides at least partial support for my previous, somewhat contrarian prediction that he won’t retire during Donald Trump’s term (to the disappointment of many conservatives who’d like Justice Alito to be replaced by a more youthful jurist).

• The same is true of Justice Clarence Thomas—a fortiori. He’s hired four clerks for OT 2025, whose names are all known to us (see below), plus an additional six (6!) clerks for the Terms after that.

• Speaking of Justice Thomas, one of his OT 2027 hires is Dan Vitagliano, a 2020 graduate of St. John’s University School of Law—and, according to St. John’s law professor Mark Movesian, that school’s first-ever SCOTUS clerk. Congratulations to both Dan and St. John’s. If any justice would hire outside the T14—or maybe that should be the T17?—it would be Justice Thomas, who’s commendably open-minded when it comes to educational pedigree.

• Vitagliano is currently cooling his heels as an associate at the powerhouse conservative boutique of Consovoy McCarthy (written about here and here). So is another future Thomas clerk, Tiffany Bates (who also clerked for Judge Kyle Duncan (5th Cir.)—one to watch when it comes to feeding). For a variety of reasons I won’t get into here, I don’t produce “feeder firm” rankings (despite occasional requests for them). But if I did, Consovoy McCarthy would be up there.

• Speaking of small places with big SCOTUS feeding patterns, Tiffany Bates graduated from tiny Hillsdale College (total undergraduate enrollment of 1,700), which punches above its weight in producing SCOTUS clerks. It doesn’t hurt that Hillsdale—a Christian, classical liberal-arts college in Michigan, which doesn’t take federal government funding (a good thing in this day and age)—is conservative, as are most of the justices. Another institution that punches above its weight, also religiously affiliated, is my alma mater, Regis High School—a Catholic, Jesuit, all-boys school in New York City. Maybe some diligent readers can provide me with statistics on the Hillsdale and/or Regis alums who have gone on to clerk for the Court in recent years.

• Fun fact: Michael Bradley (Notre Dame 2023 / Hardiman / W. Pryor), clerking for Justice Alito in OT 2025, is the younger older brother of Timothy Bradley (Notre Dame 2020 / Colloton / Sutton), who clerked for Justice Barrett in October Term 2022. [UPDATE (1:31 p.m.): Michael Bradley is the older brother of Tim Bradley; even though Michael graduated from Notre Dame Law School after Tim, Michael took some time off before law school. Another fun fact: their father is Professor Gerard “Gerry” Bradley, who taught at NDLS for many years and retired last year.]

• Speaking of Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton (6th Cir.), he’s the SCOTUS feeder judge who has sent clerks to the highest number of current justices—eight out of the nine. As noted by Sarah Isgur of Advisory Opinions (where Chief Judge Sutton was a guest earlier this week), he’s tied for this distinction with two others, Judges Amul Thapar (6th Cir.) and J. Harvie Wilkinson (4th Cir.). The first one of them to place a clerk with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “wins.”

Okay, that should suffice for now. For paid subscribers to Original Jurisdiction, I share actual clerk names—which won’t mean anything to most readers—below. As you can see, I’ve picked up a good number of hires since my prior roundup in February.

To repeat, please reach out with any hiring news that I have not yet reported (or any corrections, of course). You can contact me at davidlat@substack.com or 917-397-2751 (texts only—no calls). Please include the words “SCOTUS Clerk Hiring” in your email or text message, perhaps as the subject line of your email or the first words of your text.

And here’s an incentive: if you provide me with a hire I don’t already know about, I’ll give you a complimentary six-month subscription to Original Jurisdiction, which will allow you to access all of OJ’s content (paid and free). Thanks!

[UPDATE (2:35 p.m.): I’ve explained this many times in the past, but I do not identify sources for my SCOTUS clerk hiring news—and would even go to jail to protect a source (at least for a few days).]