Law clerks have assisted the justices of the United States Supreme Court in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. [1] Each justice is permitted to have between three and four law clerks per Court term. Most persons serving in this capacity are recent law school graduates (and typically graduated at the top of their class). [2] Among their many functions, clerks do legal research that assists justices in deciding what cases to accept and what questions to ask during oral arguments, prepare memoranda, and draft orders and opinions. [3] After retiring from the Court, a justice may continue to employ a law clerk, who may be assigned to provide additional assistance to an active justice or may assist the retired justice when sitting by designation with a lower court.
The following is a table of law clerks serving the associate justice holding Supreme Court seat 9 (the Court's ninth associate justice seat by order of creation), which was established on March 3, 1863 by the 37th Congress through the Tenth Circuit Act of 1863 (12 Stat. 794). [4] This seat is currently occupied by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.
A law clerk, judicial clerk, or judicial assistant is a person, often a lawyer, who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial clerks often play significant roles in the formation of case law through their influence upon judges' decisions. Judicial clerks should not be confused with legal clerks, court clerks, or courtroom deputies who only provide secretarial and administrative support to attorneys and/or judges.
The cert pool is a mechanism by which the Supreme Court of the United States manages the influx of petitions for certiorari ("cert") to the court. It was instituted in 1973, as one of the institutional reforms of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger on the suggestion of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.
The lists of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States cover the law clerks who have assisted the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. The list is divided into separate lists for each position in the Supreme Court.
Neil McGill Gorsuch is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and has served since April 10, 2017.
Stanley M. Silverberg was an American lawyer. He worked in the United States Department of Justice under Philip Perlman in the 1940s, before joining the law firm of Samuel Irving Rosenman.
Clarence Melville York was an American attorney who, in the 1890s, was one of the first law clerks to the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Candace Kovacic-Fleischer is an American legal scholar who is a professor emerita at American University Washington College of Law. She has taught there since 1981.
Celestine Richards McConville is an American attorney who is a law professor at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law of Chapman University in Orange, California. Her research interests include constitutional and death penalty law.
Janet Leigh Meik Wright is an American legal scholar who has taught community property, estate planning and non-profit institutions at the University of Southern California, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of California, Davis.
Julia Penny Clark is an American attorney who has argued employee benefits law cases before the United States Supreme Court.
Rebecca Latham Brown is an American law professor who is The Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law specializing in Constitutional law at USC Gould School of Law.