Law Clerk Addict's Blog
In order to try to reduce the amount of spam attacks, the Supreme Court and Court of Federal Claims pages, which have been the subject of daily automated spam attacks for the past couple of months, have had their URLs slightly changed.
UPDATE #1: It seems this might have done the trick for the SCOTUS spam, but not for Federal Claims. But don't worry, we have another idea to stop the Federal Claims spam that we'll try out in a bit.
UPDATE #2: It looks like the second idea worked and the spam runs have stopped (for now at least).
As expected, the close of the 2008-09 Supreme Court term has resulted in a flurry of news articles about the Court. Below are some recent articles about the United States Supreme Court that are worth noting but are too short to justify full posts of their own:
* The L.A. Times reports that the Ninth Circuit is no longer the most reversed geographic circuit, at least this term.
* As everyone knows by now, yesterday marked Justice David Souter's official last day as an active justice.
* Chief Justice John Roberts believes that appellate briefs have become far too long.
* The New Yorker pokes fun at Justice Clarence Thomas's history of being silent during oral arguments.
Ever since I started my first law clerk blog, I have made it a priority to gather the most comprehensive statistics on federal law clerk placement possible. Now, with the benefits of this new website, it will be easier than ever to bring you the latest aggregate data, updated in real time through the new data section!
The data section of the website is still heavily under construction, so expect new rankings and other statistics to be added semi-regularly over the next few months. In the meantime, you can check out the following statistics:
* Supreme Court Feeder Judges
* J.D. Institutions of Supreme Court Law Clerks
* Where Judges Went to Law School
As usual, please email me at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com or post a comment if you have any suggestions for new features.
Because retiring Justice David Souter chose not to hire any law clerks for the 2009-10 term, there are no jobless Supreme Court clerks for soon-to-be-Justice Sonia Sotomayor (2d Cir.) to inherit (provided that she isn't filibustered). Like most federal judges, Judge Sotomayor has already hired a full complement of law clerks for the 2009-10, but since it is almost unheard of for someone to clerk directly for the Supreme Court without prior clerkship experience, it is unlikely that these individuals will be joining Judge Sotomayor at One First Street this fall. Given that President Obama has been rather dilatory with judicial nominations and his only pending nomination to the Second Circuit is District Judge Gerard Lynch (S.D.N.Y.)--who has 2009-10 clerks of his own lined up--it is not likely that all of the 2009-10 clerks Judge Sotomayor hired last fall can readily get placements with other Second Circuit judges. Given the rather unique situation, it will be interesting to see what happens to these already-hired clerks in the coming months, and who will clerk for Judge Sotomayor this fall.
Since we are in the midst of the traditional application season for United States Supreme Court clerkships for the 2010-11 term, I thought I would link to this very comprehensive post about how to apply for a SCOTUS clerkship.
The Associated Press reports today that Supreme Court Justice David Souter has still not hired law clerks for the 2009-10 term. James Perkins at the Committee for Justice blog correctly notes that although Souter is usually late to hire, "this is really late, even for him."
It should go without saying that SCOTUS retirements are notoriously hard to predict, and for all we know Souter is getting a good laugh out of this. Of course, it also goes without saying that it would be great if you could email Law Clerk Addict at lawfirmaddict@gmail.com if you have any information about whether Justice Souter (or any other judge) is interviewing or hiring law clerks for any term.