By way of example, I remember it was considered noteworthy that law clerks to the Supreme Court as a courtesy generally applied to all 9 Justices, even though it was understood that the apps to Justices on the other side were really just a courtesy. /2
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It was considered noteworthy b/c it didn't happen that way below. At the ct of appeals level, students who were particularly liberal only applied to liberal judges, and students who were particularly conservative only applied to conservative judges. /3
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The story suggests that HLS students used to be purely careerist, and now are taking a bold stand by not applying to some judges. But this seems like students just starting to do what at least used to be the norm and wasn't thought newsworthy. /end
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Agreed, nothing new here. The data is pretty clear that there is ideological sorting in clerkship hiring. https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/19/1/96/2669337 …. Nothing weird about people not applying to work for people they don’t agree with and that won’t hire them anyway.
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Serious q. Does this imply that federal judges are unelected, unaccountable politicians after putting on their robes? Or is this less about the law and more about the social/relational part of clerking?
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Sometimes too, ambitious students who might want to be judges or party figures one day, want to start out with a judge from the party they are aligned with. "Alito clerk" is not the calling card you want when applying to WH Counsel under a Dem president
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My early ‘90s recollection is that it was true only for the more high-profile circuit court judges, and pretty much not at all for district court judges. I applied to and interviewed with both R and D appointees, and didn’t perceive politics to be doing much work in the process.
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Not a ton of Fedsoc apps to Judge Reinhardt, I’m guessing
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“It depends.” I didn’t. But some did. The only judge Id declines to clerk for would be a bonafide communist or Nazi. No moral wriggle roompic.twitter.com/d7SVRoT86W
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With all the usual caveats re generalizing from personal experience, when I applied for clerkships in 2005 I recall getting some gentle steering from the relevant office at SLS, along the lines of "X would be a good [political] fit" or "Y doesn't care about your politics."
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So I wonder whether as you say the students are basically behaving the same way as ever, and the attention is because the clerkship office is (perceived to be?) behaving somewhat differently. Obviously, though, it was a different school and 15 years ago....
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