The Implications Of Capitalism And Societal Rules

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I wonder. Try this on for size:

Last spring, as the Supreme Court wrapped up oral arguments for what was shaping up to be a blockbuster term, the law firm Jones Day invited a group of law clerks to dinner at Del Mar, an upscale restaurant on the D.C. waterfront.

At the dinner, the law clerks traded small talk with Jones Day lawyers over the restaurant’s Spanish seafood cuisine and bottles of wine. While jovial on its face, the Monday-night dinner was like other recruiting events in Washington: the firm and its prospective hires were vetting each other.

So goes the courtship of Supreme Court law clerks by Washington’s top law firms. Only around three dozen law clerks work for the justices during each one-year term, which means these lawyers — and their unparalleled knowledge of the court — are in incredibly high demand. Jones Day, the leader in the race to recruit and hire as many clerks as possible, announced last month that it snagged 8 law clerks, all of whom worked for conservative justices during the term that began in October 2022. [WaPo]

I think this is reflective of the division of opinions within SCOTUS and the Federal Judiciary on certain questions:

Twenty years later, when the Supreme Court signing bonus eclipsed the nearly $200,000 salaries of federal judges, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy complained during a congressional budget hearing thatit“devalues the position of the judiciary.”

“Something is wrong when a judge’s law clerk, just one or two years out of law school, has a salary greater than that of the judge or justice he or she served the year before,” Kennedy told senators the following year.

The question of which way SCOTUS will lean has been important right from the start. The fact that, in my cases, it’s not safely predictable is the problem. And when it’s so polarized and worth so much money, well, I suppose it’s inevitable that experts will be hired in.

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About Hue White

Former BBS operator; software engineer; cat lackey.

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