Home Tax TaxProf Weblog

TaxProf Weblog

0
TaxProf Weblog

[ad_1]

New York Instances Sidebar:  The Highway to a Supreme Court docket Clerkship Begins at Three Ivy League Faculties, by Adam Liptak:

Harvard Yale PrincetonWhen Ted Cruz attended Harvard Legislation College, he preferred to check with individuals who had undergraduate levels from Harvard, Yale or Princeton. “He mentioned he didn’t need anyone from ‘minor Ivies’ like Penn or Brown,” certainly one of his legislation faculty roommates instructed GQ.

That will strike you as slicing the baloney of elitism awfully skinny. However a brand new examine has discovered that Supreme Court docket justices do a lot the identical factor in deciding on their legislation clerks [Tracey George (Vanderbilt; Google Scholar), Albert Yoon (Toronto; Google Scholar) & Mitu Gulati (Virginia; Google Scholar), Some Are More Equal Than Others: U.S. Supreme Court Clerkships].

It’s not information that the justices favor a handful of legislation faculties in doling out clerkships, a glittering credential that each one however ensures success in a career obsessive about standing markers. However the examine provides one other issue: To get a clerkship, it actually helps to have gone to school at Harvard, Yale or Princeton. …

Every justice usually hires 4 legislation clerks per time period. The examine, which collected information on the 1,426 former clerks within the 40-year interval ending in 2020, discovered that greater than two-thirds of them attended simply 5 legislation faculties: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and the College of Chicago. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as an illustration, selected 58 clerks within the interval lined by the examine, 37 of them from Harvard or Yale. …

The underside line, Professor George mentioned, is that the street to a Supreme Court docket clerkship begins in school. “Elite legislation faculty levels don’t restore or overcome a lower-status undergraduate diploma,” she mentioned. “You may’t scrub your undergraduate diploma with a legislation diploma.”

The justices themselves are merchandise of elite educations. Eight of them attended legislation faculty at Harvard or Yale, and 6 of them have undergraduate levels from Harvard, Yale or Princeton. And 6 of them had themselves served as legislation clerks on the Supreme Court docket.

There generally is a clubby high quality to the justices’ remarks in regards to the faculties they attended. Chief Justice Roberts, who has two Harvard levels, was requested in 2009 whether or not Supreme Court docket justices “may relate to abnormal of us.”

The chief justice mentioned he wished to dispel a fable. “Not all justices went to elite establishments,” he mentioned. “A few of them went to Yale.”

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/02/ny-times-the-road-to-a-supreme-court-clerkship-starts-at-three-ivy-league-colleges-you-cant-scrub-yo.html

[ad_2]

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here