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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Judicial Assistants Or Junior Judges: The Hiring, Utilization, And Influence Of Law Clerks, Chad Oldfather, Todd C. Peppers
Judicial Assistants Or Junior Judges: The Hiring, Utilization, And Influence Of Law Clerks, Chad Oldfather, Todd C. Peppers
Scholarly Articles
Law clerks have been part of the American judicial system since 1882, when Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray hired a young Harvard Law School graduate named Thomas Russell to serve as his assistant. Justice Gray paid for his law clerks out of his own pocket until Congress authorized funds for the hiring of “stenographic clerks” in 1886. The Gray law clerks, however, were not mere stenographers. Justice Gray assigned them a host of legal and non-legal job duties. His clerks discussed the record and debated the attendant legal issues with Justice Gray prior to oral argument, conducted legal research, and …
Justice Hugo Black And His Law Clerks: Match-Making And Match Point, Todd C. Peppers
Justice Hugo Black And His Law Clerks: Match-Making And Match Point, Todd C. Peppers
Scholarly Articles
Like other Justices on the Supreme Court, Justice Black hired law clerks to assist with the work of the Court. Each year, his law clerks would assist in reviewing cert. petitions, doing legal research, and editing opinion drafts. These job duties, however, were only one dimension of the Black clerkship. As the Justice himself once remarked to a law-clerk applicant, “I don’t pick my law clerks for what they can do for me, I pick my law clerks for what I can do for them.”
Isaiah And His Young Disciples: Justice Brandeis And His Law Clerks, Todd C. Peppers
Isaiah And His Young Disciples: Justice Brandeis And His Law Clerks, Todd C. Peppers
Scholarly Articles
It cannot be said that Louis Dembitz Brandeis has suffered from a lack of scholarly attention. Brandeis is considered to be one of the most influential Justices in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, and scores of books and law-review articles have been written about Brandeis the lawyer, the political insider, the Zionist, and the Justice. A case can be made, however, that history has not fully recognized the important and lasting contribution that Brandeis made to the development of the institutional rules and norms surrounding the Supreme Court law clerk, an oversight that this essay seeks to rectify.
William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.: Breaking The Color Barrier At The U.S. Supreme Court, Todd C. Peppers
William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.: Breaking The Color Barrier At The U.S. Supreme Court, Todd C. Peppers
Scholarly Articles
The purpose of this essay is twofold: It will endeavor to succinctly summarize the important events of Coleman’s life and professional career, while making the argument that these achievements were as groundbreaking in the legal community as Robinson’s were to baseball. Admittedly, looking to our national pastime is hardly an original literary maneuver; The myriad similarities and links between baseball and the law have offered rich material for many legal writers.2 Moreover, this article does not wish to diminish Coleman’s accomplishments by comparing them to a mere “game.” By drawing upon the sixtieth anniversary of Robinson’s debut, my hope is …