"We Are Not Worthy": The OT 2001 Supreme Court Clerks!

During these lazy days of late summer, things have been a little slow here at Underneath Their Robes. Traffic to this blog has been noticeably lower than usual. Article III Groupie is wondering: Where has everyone gone? Is the entire country on vacation?

To be sure, a desire to take a vacation before the kids return to school, or to dovetail with the upcoming Labor Day weekend, is understandable. (Heck, even the indefatigable Howard Bashman took last week off!) But A3G is surprised by just how quiet and slow things have gotten, both in the blogosphere and the mainstream news media -- which would have nothing to cover without Hurricane Katrina. After all, unlike some European countries, the United States does not have a nationwide tradition of taking off the entire month of August.

In an effort to increase traffic to her blog, A3G will employ a time-honored strategy for generating visits and page views: name-dropping. Mentioning large numbers of people by name is perhaps second only to posting pictures of nude celebrities as a method of improving website traffic. The people who are mentioned check your blog (repeatedly) to see what's being said about them, and their friends and relatives do so as well. This explains why A3G's profiles of the Supreme Court clerks for October Term 2005 were such a wildly popular feature of this blawg.

So, not too long ago, a reader emailed A3G to remind her that she still hasn't posted a list of the Supreme Court clerks from the October Term 2001. This reader said he was "anxiously awaiting" the OT 2001 clerk list, since it would allow him to complete his statistical analysis of the past few terms of SCOTUS clerks. With the exception of the OT 2001 clerk class, A3G has previously published lists of the past five terms of high court clerks. See here (OT 2000), here (OT 2002), here (OT 2003), and here (OT 2004).

(As for the OT 2005 clerks, a final list is not yet available, since we still need to see what happens with the Roberts nomination. But A3G did profile, with love and adoration, the law clerks to the other justices (including the outgoing Justice O'Connor): WHR, JPS, SOC, AS, AMK, DHS, CT, RBG, SGB.)

Now, before posting the names, law schools, and prior clerkships of the OT 2001 Supreme Court clerks, here's a little twist: A3G hereby invites her readers to append comments about any of the OT 2001 clerks to this post (or about any of the clerks in the other 2001-2005 clerk classes, which should be appended as comments to the applicable post). These comments should be comparable to the tidbits that A3G included in her OT 2005 clerk profiles: accomplishments and accolades, fun facts, interesting items of trivia, etc.

Of course, here at UTR -- where federal judges and law clerks are praised to the heavens -- comments that are flattering or fawning are most favored. It goes without saying that the comments should not be defamatory or otherwise inappropriate. A3G reserves complete discretion to delete any and all comments, which she will be monitoring closely. Any comment that is negative will be promptly stricken from the record.*

Without further ado, the members of the Elect for October Term 2001 are:**

Chief Justice Rehnquist
Gregg J. Costa (Texas/Randolph '99-'00)
Heidi C. Doerhoff (Missouri/Gibson (8th Cir.))
Brett H. McGurk (Columbia/G. Lynch)

Justice Stevens
Kathleen R. Hartnett (Harvard/Garland)
Alison J. Nathan (Cornell/B. Fletcher)
Edward N. Siskel (Chicago/D.W. Nelson)

Justice O'Connor
Carolyn Frantz (Michigan/Tatel Tot)
Michelle Friedland (Stanford/Tatel Tot)
Jeremy Gaston (Texas/Higginbotham '99-'00)
Anup Malani (Chicago/S. Williams)

Justice Scalia
Shay Dvoretzky (Yale/Luttigator)
Susan Kearns (NYU/Kozinski)
Brian Fitzpatrick (Harvard/O'Scannlain)
Edward Morrison (Chicago/Posner)

Justice Kennedy
Steven A. Engel (Yale/Kozinski)
John C. Neiman, Jr. (Harvard/Niemeyer)
Nicholas Q. Rosenkranz (Yale/Easterbrook '99-'00)
Alexander Willscher (Chicago/Wilkinson)

Justice Souter
Benjamin Gruenstein (Harvard/S. Williams '99-'00)
Thomas H. Lee (Harvard/Boudin)
Ann M. Lipton (Harvard/Becker)
Monica W. Rothbaum (NYU/Edwards)

Justice Thomas
Matthew B. Berry (Yale/Silberman '97-'98)
Sigal P. Mandelker (Penn/E. Jones)
Neomi J. Rao (Chicago/Wilkinson)
Margaret A. Ryan (Notre Dame/Luttigatrix)

Justice Ginsburg
Heather Elliott (Berkeley/Garland)
David A. O'Neil (Harvard/Sack)
Joseph Palmore (UVA/Gleeson (E.D.N.Y.) '99-'00)
Aaron J. Saiger (Columbia/D. Ginsburg)

Justice Breyer
Vince Chhabria (Berkeley/Browning '99-'00)
Risa Goluboff (Yale/Guidomaniac)
Mirah Horowitz (Duke/Wardlaw)
Michael Leiter (Harvard/Boudin)

Article Three Groupie looks forward to learning even more about the aforementioned legal geniuses from her readers. Please post scrumptious tidbits about them, early and often!

* If you have something negative to say about one of these folks, please do not post it as a comment. Instead, just email it to A3G, so she can add it to her (large and growing) stockpile of dirt about federal judges, Supreme Court clerks, and other influential figures within the legal profession. Many of the tips that Article 3 Groupie receives from her readership are never published in UTR's glossy pages -- A3G just holds on to them, for her information and future reference...

** No, that's not a typo; A3G's use of "are" rather than "were" is deliberate. As she explained here, "As the old saying goes, 'Once a Supreme Court clerk, always a Supreme Court clerk.' There is no such thing as a former Supreme Court clerk -- being a Supreme Court clerk is not a job, but a state of being."

Comments

[JLS]

not only is Mirah a fabulous dresser and a total hottie, she is a bright and gifted writer.

[Another former 2d Cir. Clerk]

Joe Palmore also clerked for Dennis Jacobs - why all the no love for Judge Jacobs in his clerks' bios?

[Allison]

I had Gregg Costa for a Federal Courts class when I visited at UH in the spring of 2004. He was one of my favorite professors in all of law school - very bright and very nice and an excellent teacher. And he shared some good stories about working for the court, too. I had a professor my first year of law school at UT who had clerked for Thurgood Marshall - he was obviously very smart, but not very good at teaching. (And he only told us one TM story - I felt robbed.)
I believe that Costa has left Weil and is now an AUSA here in Houston.

[Anonymous]

Mirah Horowitz has a fantastic sense of style. It's not surprising-rumor has it that she used to go shopping with her former boss, judicial hottie Kim Wardlaw!

[Dylan]

Gregg Costa was among the most pleasant interviewers I encountered during OCI in Fall 2003, although his stories of working Sundays at home with a laptop on one knee and his newborn baby on the other as an example of how he balanced work (Weil, Gotshal & Manges in Houston) and life may not have made the impression he hoped for. I also understand he taught a night class as an adjunct at the University of Houston Law Center last spring. One early report had him seeming somewhat nervous and unsure of himself, but I have no doubt he settled down after the first couple of weeks.

[Gentlemen Prefer Blondes]

Ann O'Connell is another blonde WHR clerk.

[Clerkship Envy]

Risa Goluboff and Ann Lipton are two of the many former Supreme Court clerks blogging over at Think Progress: Supreme Court Extra. Check out the star-studded line-up of liberal Elect:

http://court.thinkprogress.org/aboutsc

[Anonymous]

The New York Times recently reported: "Senator John Cornyn, a Republican on the Judiciary Committee who will review any nominee,... just hired Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, to advise him on the confirmation process."

[Anonymous]

Has anyone noticed Rehnquist's proclivity for blond female law clerks? Heidi Doerhoff is but one of this long line.

[Former 2d Cir. Clerk]

Brett McGurk also clerked for Dennis Jacobs on the Second Circuit, before he went to Gerry Lynch.

[Wannabe Law Professor]

The term is overrused, but Nick Rosenkranz truly is a "genius." He has gotten two pieces into the Harvard Law Review.