Litigation

Polarization in Hiring Supreme Court Clerks?

By Peter Hardin

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ideological divide may also be reflected in a recent pattern: A significant divide in the hiring of justice’s law clerks, the New York Times reports.

It has become more common for conservative justices to hire clerks who worked earlier for judges chosen by Republicans, and for more liberal justices to employ clerks who worked for judges named by Democrats, the article says.

?We are getting a composition of the clerk work force that is getting to be like the House of Representatives,? said Professor David J. Garrow, a historian at the University of Cambridge. ?Each side is putting forward only ideological purists.?

In comparison, Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by President Richard Nixon, hired roughly equally in selecting his clerks.

The article by Adam Liptak also suggests that Democratic party identification by law clerks can make a liberal vote more likely from a justice who employs them, with the corresponding parallel true for Republicans too.

The article has provoked further commentary. In the Balkinization blog, Jason Mazzone questioned Liptak’s analysis on the grounds there are many more federal circuit court judges now who were appointed by Republicans than 30 years ago, and these judges accordingly train more law clerks who go on to the Supreme Court.

Liptak’s piece also gets a going-over in the Above the Law blog and in the National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 09, 2010 (boomark / email).