Law Commons^™

The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer

Michigan Law Review

In August 2006, the New York Times caused a stir by reporting that the number of female law clerks at the United States Supreme Court has fallen sharply in the first full Term in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer on the bench. In an era in which nearly fifty percent of all law school graduates are women, the Times reported, less than twenty percent of the clerks in the Court's 2006 Term - seven of thirty-seven - are women. In interviews, Justices Souter and Breyer viewed the sharp drop in the number of female clerks as an …