Law Commons^™

Keeping Up: Walking With Justice Douglas, Charles A. Reich

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Sexual Harassment In The Judiciary, Leah Litman, Deeva Shah

Articles

This Essay examines the legal profession’s role in sexual harassment, particularly in the federal courts. It argues that individuals in the profession have both an individual and collective responsibility for the professional norms that have allowed harassment to happen with little recourse for the people subject to the harassment. It suggests that the legal profession should engage in a sustained, public reflection about how our words, actions, attitudes, and institutional arrangements allow harassment to happen, and about the many different ways that we can prevent and address harassment.

Generalist Judges And Advocates' Jargon, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Clerking is a privilege. Fresh out of law school and eager to begin their careers, law clerks at any level of the federal or state judiciary covet the opportunity to learn from a judge’s reservoir of knowledge. But law clerks who anticipate careers writing as advocates are also well-positioned to learn about something that a judge may not know when briefs or other adversary submissions land on the desk.

That “something” concerns jargon, this article’s focus because its use by advocates can impede the court’s understanding of a case’s facts and law. “Jargon” refers to “special words or expressions that …

The Future Of Federal Law Clerk Hiring, Aaron L. Nielson

Aaron L. Nielson

The market for federal law clerks has been upended. Beginning in 2003, the Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan was implemented to regulate clerkship hiring. According to the Plan, a judge could not interview or hire a potential law clerk before the beginning of the applicant’s third year of law school. The Plan, however, never worked well, constantly got worse, and has now officially collapsed. Across the country, clerkship hiring once again regularly occurs during the second year of law school. This Article addresses the rise and inevitable fall of the Plan. In particular, it submits that the Plan never …

Judicial Externships: Sharing Current Practices, Dinah Lennon Archambeault

Duke Law Master of Judicial Studies Theses

The need for externships has risen over the years as the importance of providing experiential education to supplement traditional doctrinal law school education has become generally acknowledged. Despite the many articles on externships, few, if any, have addressed how judicial externs are selected and how judicial externships are structured in the courts.

It was necessary to conduct qualitative research to determine how various courts address their extern programs, if at all. Based on the research I have undertaken, practices vary among courts and judges. Not only is there no uniform practice with respect to which courts and even judges place …

A Practical Guide To Appellate Judging, J. E. Cote

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Clerks As Judicial Actors And As Sources, Scott Armstrong

Marquette Law Review

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A Truth About Career Law Clerks, Joseph D. Kearney

Marquette Law Review

None.

Surgeons Or Scribes? The Role Of United States Court Of Appeals Law Clerks In "Appellate Triage", Todd C. Peppers, Micheal W. Giles, Bridget Tainer-Parkins

Marquette Law Review

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Law Clerks And The Institutional Design Of The Federal Judiciary, Albert Yoon

Marquette Law Review

This Essay highlights the evolving institutional changes in the federal judiciary—a protracted confirmation process, higher caseload demands, and declining real salaries—in concurrence with evidence suggesting greater reliance by judges on their law clerks when writing opinions. These dynamic forces arguably undermine the integrity of the judicial process and counsel for legislative action to address judicial working conditions or for changes by judges in the hiring of law clerks.

Justice Brennan And His Law Clerks, Stephen Wermiel

Marquette Law Review

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Panel Discussion: Judges' Perspectives On Law Clerk Hiring, Utilization, And Influence, David R. Stras, Diane S. Sykes, James A. Wynn Jr.

Marquette Law Review

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The Future Of Federal Law Clerk Hiring, Aaron L. Nielson

Marquette Law Review

The market for federal law clerks has been upended. Beginning in 2003, the Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan was implemented to regulate clerkship hiring. According to the Plan, a judge could not interview or hire a potential law clerk before the beginning of the applicant’s third year of law school. The Plan, however, never worked well, constantly got worse, and has now officially collapsed. Across the country, clerkship hiring once again regularly occurs during the second year of law school.

This Article addresses the rise and inevitable fall of the Plan. In particular, it submits that the Plan never …

Fielding An Excellent Team: Law Clerk Selection And Chambers Structure At The U.S. Supreme Court, Christopher D. Kromphardt

Marquette Law Review

Supreme Court Justices exercise wide discretion when hiring law clerks. The Justices are constrained only by the pool of qualified applicants and by norms of the institution, such as that beginning with Chief Justice Burger’s tenure in 1969 90% of clerks have previously served a clerkship with a federal judge. Previous work finds that ideology structures hiring decisions at the individual clerk level; however, these analyses fail to account for the fact that a Justice hires several clerks each Term—he seeks a winning team, not just a single all-star. Hiring decisions are structuring decisions in which one of a Justice’s …

Bonus Babies Escape Golden Handcuffs: How Money And Politics Has Transformed The Career Paths Of Supreme Court Law Clerks, Artemus Ward, Christina Dwyer, Kiranjit Gill

Marquette Law Review

Job prospects for former Supreme Court law clerks have radically changed in recent years. Beginning in 1986, skyrocketing law firm signing bonuses caused a transformation from the natural sorting system, where clerks chose among private practice, government, academic, and public interest positions, to a Bonus Baby Regime where former clerks almost always choose to work in private firms after they leave the Court. This development is a result of both financial and ideological factors. While the more conservative clerking corps of recent years has been increasingly drawn to private practice, the firms themselves hire along ideological lines. Still, while former …

Hiring Supreme Court Law Clerks: Probing The Ideological Linkage Between Judges And Justices, Lawrence Baum

Marquette Law Review

Since the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of Supreme Court law clerks have had prior experience clerking in lower courts, primarily the federal courts of appeals. Throughout that period, there has been a tendency for Justices to take clerks from lower court judges who share the Justices’ ideological tendencies, in what can be called an ideological linkage between judges and Justices in the selection of law clerks. However, that tendency became considerably stronger between the 1970s and 1990s, and it has remained very strong since the 1990s.

This Article probes the sources of that alteration in the Justices’ selection of law …

Revisiting The Influence Of Law Clerks On The U.S. Supreme Court's Agenda-Setting Process, Ryan C. Black, Christina L. Boyd, Amanda C. Bryan

Marquette Law Review

Do law clerks influence U.S. Supreme Court Justices’ decisions in the Court’s agenda-setting stage? For those Justices responding to their own law clerks’ cert recommendations, we expect a high degree of agreement between Justice and clerk. For non-employing Justices, however, we anticipate that the likelihood of agreement between clerk and Justice will vary greatly based on the interplay among the ideological compatibility between a Justice and the clerk, the underlying certworthiness of the petition for review, and the clerk’s final recommendation. Relying on a newly collected dataset of petitions making the Court’s discuss list over the 1986 through 1993 Terms, …

Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

As applicants, federal judges, and law school career counselors everywhere frantically come to terms with the new clerkship landscape, one truth is inescapable: the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan ("the Plan") is dead. On January 29, 2013, the D.C. Circuit-the Plan's last and best defender-announced that it would no longer follow the Plan. The consequences of that announcement have been swift. For the last several months, months earlier than almost anyone expected, untold numbers of federal judges across the country have been rushing to hire law clerks. For these judges, the unregulated clerkship market of the pre-Plan era is back. …

Law Clerks Gone Wild, Parker B. Potter, Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

This Article grows out of my delight in seeing fellow law clerks break through the paper curtain and onto the pages of the Federal Reporter, the Federal Supplement, or some other compendium of judicial opinions. While my fascination with law clerks as the subjects rather than the instruments of judicial writing is probably not universal, I have selected the opinions I discuss in this Article with an eye toward entertaining—and maybe even instructing, if only slightly—the clerkigentsia and the judiciary. So, with that audience in mind, I set off in search of law clerks who had gone wild …

Communication Within The Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals: The View From The Bench, Stephen L. Wasby

Golden Gate University Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Clerk To Justice: Lessons Drawn From Justice Stevens' Year With Wiley Rutledge, Laura Ray

Laura K. Ray

No abstract provided.

Judges And Their Editors, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This essay discusses the roles of personal law clerks, central staff clerks, and Reporters of Decisions in editing judges’ opinions at the drafting stage. “The overarching lesson [is] that by submerging pride of authorship during an opinion’s gestation and by weighing editorial input with an open mind, judges secure in their craft advance the interests of justice.” The essay also discusses the constraints imposed by the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct on the circle of persons a judge may consult without giving the parties advance notice. The essay is adapted from Prof. Abrams’ address to the international meeting of …

The Law Clerk Proxy Wars: Secrecy, Accountability, And Ideology In The Supreme Court, Carolyn Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

This piece provides an in-depth review and analysis of two recent books about Supreme Court law clerks, Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk, by Todd C. Peppers, and Sorcerers’ Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court, by Artemus Ward and David L. Weiden. In addition, the essay addresses a question so obvious that it is rarely asked – why is there so much curiosity about Supreme Court law clerks in the first place? In the essay, I analyze a widespread concern – and one discussed in …

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 …

In Restraint Of Trade: The Judicial Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Mark W. Pletcher, Ludovic C. Ghesquiere

University of Colorado Law Review

In an effort to bring order to what has historically been a chaotic process, federal judges and law schools implemented the Judicial Law Clerk Hiring Plan in 2002, prohibiting all students except those in their third year of law school from applying for federal clerkships. However, there is a serious problem with the Law Clerk Hiring Plan: it is an unreasonable restraint of trade. In this article, we explore the history of the Law Clerk Hiring Plan and analyze whether it would survive traditional antitrust scrutiny. We conclude that the Plan is an unreasonable restraint of trade. Further, based upon …

Tribute To John Pickering, Stanley L. Temko

Michigan Law Review

John was a close friend and a professional colleague of mine for more than fifty years, and he was admired by and very close to a number of members of our firm. Everyone knows his substantial contributions as a lawyer. I will just mention a couple.

The Appeal, Alex Kozinski, Alexander Volokh

Michigan Law Review

Appeal from the United States District Court. Hermann Bendemann, District Judge, Presiding. Argued and Submitted July 3, 1926. Filed May 1, 2005. Before: Alex K., Bucephalus and Godot, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Alex K.

Hail To The Chief: Former Law Clerks For William Rehnquist Recall What They Learned And How He Touched Their Lives, Craig M. Bradley, Laura E. Little, John C. Englander, Celestine Richards Mcconville

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died Sept. 3, is remembered for his disarming warmth and humor, breadth of knowledge about the law, and insistence that there is life outside the office. Few knew him better than the legions of clerks who tolled with and learned from him. Indeed, the sheer number who attended his funeral testifies to how highly he was regarded. Here, four former clerks from the decades of the 1970s, '80s and '90s write about their own particular memories of the late chief justice.

Unlawful Discrimination Or A Necessity For A Fair Trial?: Exclusion Of A Law Clerk With A Disability From The Courtroom During Jury Trial Of A Personal Injury Case, Luther A. Granquist

William Mitchell Law Review

Today, the judicial system, broadly viewed to include bench and bar, jurors, and court personnel, includes more persons of color and more women than ever before. Issues of discrimination on the basis of race and gender continue, but progress has been made. However, few persons with evident disabilities practice law or sit on the bench. Perhaps that is why the very presence of a man with serious disabilities prompts concerns about the effect that he will have, just being there, on the outcome of a case. When more persons with evident disabilities, more persons who use wheelchairs or have personal …

Do As We Say Or Do As We Do?: How The Supreme Court Law Clerk Controversy Reveals A Lack Of Accountability At The High Court, Robert M. Agostisi, Brian P. Corrigan

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.