Article III Groupie's obsession with The Elect, aka Supreme Court clerks, is well-documented. So it should come as no surprise that she's also obsessed with "feeder judges": those lower-court judges with a track record of sending their clerks on to the SCOTUS.
Earlier this month, the blog of the Daily Journal ran an item about Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain (9th Cir.) as a feeder judge. Judge O'Scannlain has been a feeder judge for many years (see here) - and his feeder judge ranking is rising fast, thanks to his placing three clerks at the Court for October Term 2009.
Check out the write-up, after the jump.
[The item below first appeared in the subscription-only blog of the Daily Journal. It is reproduced with permission of the author.]
O'Scannlain Lines Up Three Clerks For SCOTUS
April 15, 2009 2:37 PM
For
the first time, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diarmuid
O’Scannlain will have three of his former clerks ensconced at the U.S.
Supreme Court in the same term.
David Lat – a former O’Scannlain clerk himself – reported on his legal gossip site www.abovethelaw.com Tuesday that the three young attorneys will all be clerking for justices in the October 2009 term. The court’s public information office later confirmed that Lat’s information was correct.
As Lat noted, justices regularly hire one or two of O’Scannlain’s former clerks, but never three in one term. It may be a sign that Portland, Ore.-based O’Scannlain is “moving up the ranks” of the top feeder judges for Supreme Court clerkships, Lat said in an e-mail.
O’Scannlain himself said in an e-mail that he has been “very pleased to see the success of many former clerks who went on to clerk for justices at the Supreme Court.” He described the latest crop as “three of the very best.”
Justice Antonin Scalia hired one of the clerks, 2008 University of Chicago Law School grad Daniel M. Sullivan, who is still with O’Scannlain in Portland. Justice Clarence Thomas hired the other two: Brian Morrissey, a 2007 Notre Dame Law School graduate who is currently an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, and 2006 Yale Law School graduate Marah Stith, who is now working at the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Two other 9th Circuit judges who regularly provide clerks, Alex Kozinski and Stephen Reinhardt, each have two lined up for the 2009 term, according to Lat. The court will release an official list sometime in the summer.
-- Lawrence Hurley
Email: [email protected]
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