The start of the new Supreme Court Term is still over a month away. The nine robed ones are all over the world -- teaching in Europe, chilling in New Hampshire, and otherwise getting away from One First Street.

So things have been relatively quiet on the Supreme Court clerk hiring front. There are no new names over at the Clerkship Notification Blog or at Wikipedia (which also seems to be missing a few names that we reported last month).

But there has been some movement. We hear that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently hired David Newman (Yale 2006 / Katzmann / Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.)) as her second law clerk for October Term 2010. (RBG has already completed her OT 2009 hiring.)

Have other justices interrupted their summer vacations to do some clerk hiring? If you're aware of some news not previously reported in these pages, please share what you know, by email (subject line: "Supreme Court clerk hiring").

If you're interested, check out the updated list of Supreme Court clerks for OT 2009 and OT 2010 (with David Newman added), after the jump.

Good news for Legal Eagle Wedding Watchers: LEWW will be returning to a more frequent and timely posting schedule! Beginning next week, we'll once again feature our gold standard of three fabulous couples per week to ogle and dissect.

We'll bring you more hot August weddings tomorrow and Friday, but for now, it's time for our readers to vote on a Couple of the Month for July. Although their write-up wasn't in the NYT and therefore didn't run in our normal LEWW column, we're including celebrity professors Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein, whose union merited LEWW bonus coverage last month (as well as a shout-out in the Washington Post's Reliable Source column).

For more information on these newlyweds, click on the link below. When you're ready to vote, here's the poll:

Former Supreme Court clerks, also known as the Elect, have no shortage of job opportunities. And a new development in state government is giving them even more. From the National Law Journal:

A trend among states in recent years to appoint a solicitor general has increased opportunities for young attorneys to get into court and ultimately return to private practice far from Washington, the traditional heart of the nation's appellate bar.

In the past decade, a dozen states, including California, Florida and North Carolina, have added state solicitor generals [sic], many of whom oversee large staffs, said Dan Schweitzer, Supreme Court counsel for the National Association of Attorneys General. Nationwide, 37 states have a solicitor general, he said.

"There are a lot more appellate positions that attract top-notch lawyers," Schweitzer said.

There are shout-outs to several hot young lawyers whose names should be familiar to ATL readers.

Find out who, after the jump.

We interrupt the spirited smackdown of ATL Idol to bring you a couple of LEWW-related announcements. First, as expected, Team Ho-Glover scored a decisive win in June's Couple of the Month voting. LEWW salutes this glorious SCOTUS - WGWAG - Friend-of-Lat juggernaut!

In other news, two notable grooms didn't make our list of finalists this week. The first is Lee Bollinger, son of current Columbia University president (and former University of Michigan president) Lee Bollinger. And the second is Paul Lieberstein, who looks a lot like that guy who plays Toby in The Office. Because he is that guy.

On to this week's contestants:

1. Sue-Yun Ahn and Charles Kitcher

2. Jennifer Hare and Jaron Shipp

3. Gena Hatcher and David Lenzi

4. Athena Theodoro and Daniel Adamson

Click on the link below to read more about these impressive legal matches.

It's nearly August, and we still haven't crowned ATL's Legal Eagle Couple of the Month for June. Time to vote!

As we did last month, we've added a third couple to round out the choices. We thought that Mary Fan and Dean Kawamoto were the month's strongest runners-up, so we've included them for your consideration. Last month, the "bonus couple" waltzed away with the title; let's see if Mary and Dean can pull off a similar upset.

If you're ready to vote, here's the poll. To read more about the couples, click on the link below.

A few weeks ago, Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the Most Holy D.C. Circuit warned summer associates not to do anything that would get them a shout-out on Above the Law. Law school career counselors, we're told, tell students the same thing when advising them about how to conduct themselves as summer associates.

That may be wise advice, as far as Biglaw goes. You don't want to stand out from the crowd. Work hard, keep your head down, get the offer.

But if you're gunning for the ultimate credential in the legal profession, a coveted U.S. Supreme Court clerkship, could a little bit of publicity on ATL perhaps be a good thing? Could the Elect be governed by a different set of rules than mere mortals?

Am Law 200 law firms are expected to hire about 10,000 new associates this fall (although query whether that number will go down with the economy). In contrast, the nine justices, plus retired Justice O'Connor, hire just 37 new law clerks each year. Thus, unlike summer associates, Supreme Court clerks DO need to stand out from the crowd to land their jobs.

Interestingly enough, a number of Harvard Law School students who were mentioned by name on ATL subsequently landed SCOTUS clerkships. Consider:

As promised, we're back with our second installment of LEWW this week. We think you'll agree that this one features some of our finest contestants of the season. A SCOTUS clerkship (finally!), a Rhodes, more YLS grads -- enjoy this special Independence Day edition of the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch!

Here are the names:

1. Stephanie Denton and Zeno Baucus

2. Mary Fan and Dean Kawamoto

3. Emma Terrell and Trevor Leitch

4. Courtenay Van Sciver and Peter Washkowitz

5. Maria Glover and Derek Ho

Click on the "continue reading" link below to see these couples' photos and sparkly credentials.

While we're on the subject of Supreme Court clerks...

The AMK clerk who worked on Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the Court held that imposing the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, has committed an even bigger boo-boo than the JGR clerk who screwed up the Bob Dylan quotation.

As noted yesterday, sometimes the Elect are "just like us."

In Court Ruling on Executions, a Factual Flaw [New York Times]
The Supremes Dis the Military Justice System [CAAFlog]

What's going on at the Supreme Court? Last weekend, after handing down the last opinions of October Term 2007, two of the justices had law clerk reunions at One First Street.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hosted a tea for her clerks on Sunday afternoon. Perfectly lovely and civilized, and just what one would expect from a justice with a white frilly thing sprouting from her neck.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has his clerk reunion every five years. There was a black-tie dinner at the Court on Saturday night, followed by a kid- and family-friendly lunch on Sunday. Turnout was strong, and the attendees included several former AMK clerks who are now judges: Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (9th Cir.; awkward?), Judge Brett Kavanaugh (D.C. Cir.), Judge Neil Gorsuch (10th Cir.), and the just-confirmed Raymond Kethledge (6th Cir.). We may have a more detailed report on the AMK reunion later.

And speaking of Supreme Court clerks, we have lots of hiring news to pass along. We were hoping to wait a bit longer to tie up some loose ends (of which there are a number). But since some of this news has been showing up elsewhere -- e.g., the Volokh Conspiracy (Orin Kerr); Wikipedia -- we've been forced to show our hand.

As noted over at the Clerkship Notification Blog, Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have completed their law clerk hiring for October Term 2009. In addition, we've independently confirmed that Justice Antonin Scalia is also all finished for OT 2009. If you were hoping to land a clerkship with JPS, RBG, or AS -- who, by the way, are frequently mentioned by ex-SCOTUS clerks (of all ideological stripes) when you ask them who the smartest of the nine justices are -- sorry, but the courthouse doors are closed. Try again next year.

Check out the list of Supreme Court clerks for OT 2009 -- which contains some information gaps, which we're hoping you can help us fill -- after the jump.

They work on the most significant -- and glamorous -- legal cases of our time. They get $250,000 signing bonuses when they leave the marble palace at One First Street for private practice. They dominate when it comes to Legal Eagle Wedding Watch.

But at the end of the day, Supreme Court clerks are just like us. Some of their storybook weddings end unhappily.

From Robert Ambrogi, over at Legal Blog Watch:

It is the dream of so many Biglaw lawyers: To simplify, to downsize, to forgo big bucks in favor of personal fulfillment. And it was the dream the former Washington, D.C., Biglaw partner had pursued -- at least until his plans were foiled by last week's Massachusetts Appeals Court opinion in the case, C.D.L. v. M.M.L.

The unidentified lawyer had it all, graduating from law school near the top of his class, clerkships with a federal circuit court and then the Supreme Court, a private practice in energy law with the D.C. office of a large Wall Street firm, average annual income of $700,000, a large house in Maryland and private schools for the kids.

Eventually the travel and stress got to him and he began to contemplate downsizing. He and his wife came up with a plan for him to leave his firm and seek an alternative career, but still earn sufficient income to keep their lifestyles comfortable.

Seems reasonable. But things didn't turn out quite as they expected.

Read more, below the fold.

At his talk last week before the Federalist Society here in Washington, Justice Antonin Scalia casually alluded to interviewing a clerkship applicant "just the other day." One could sense the ears of hundreds of summer associates perking up at his passing mention of that coveted clerkship.

Justice Scalia's offhand remark confirmed what we've been hearing through the grapevine. Nino has started interviewing potential law clerks for October Term 2009 -- and he's started hiring, too. We've confirmed that he has hired Katherine Twomey, a 2008 graduate of UVA Law School, who will be clerking for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson (4th Cir.) before heading off to One First Street.

Is Justice Scalia moving early? Not terribly. It's true, of course, that the OT 2009 crop of clerks won't start for over a year. The Court is still busy handing down its biggest opinions for October Term 2007, and the October Term 2008 clerks have not yet arrived. (We have a short piece about the composition of the OT 2008 clerk class in this month's Washingtonian magazine; to read it, click here.)

But compared to his colleagues, Justice Scalia is in the middle of the pack when it comes to OT 2009 hiring. In addition to Scalia, five other justices have hired at least one clerk for 2009-2010. Justice Ginsburg is the farthest along, having already hired half of her clerks for that year.

To see what the class of SCOTUS clerks for OT 2009 looks like so far, read below the fold.

* Back in February, we did a mini-profile of Isaac Lidsky, an incoming law clerk to retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Now Tony Mauro takes a more detailed look at the child actor who will be the Supreme Court's first blind law clerk, including a very interesting discussion of how Lidsky will handle a "reading-intensive job that entails digesting hundreds of petitions and writing memos and rough drafts of decisions." [Legal Times]

* The WSJ Law Blog has a fun interview with Justice Antonin Scalia (posted in three parts). Some highlights:

PART 1: Nino's recommendations for Italian food in Washington: Tosca (although it's "a lot pricier than A.V. [Ristorante, now closed]"); Bebo, in Crystal City ("much less pricey," and the pizzas "are perhaps even better than they were at A.V.").

Also, here's a new nickname for the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel: "the Paladin of Presidential Prerogative." (We still prefer Finishing School for the Elect.)

PART 2: "[D]issents are just good. Look back at Korematsu. Isn't it nice to know that Robert Jackson - at least someone on the Court - saw how horrible it was? A dissent keeps you honest."

PART 3: Don't pick your nose. Also, on The Merchant of Venice: "Portia was a terrible judge. I mean, you know, if you write a contract to take a pound of flesh, then obviously you take whatever blood goes with it. That's implicit. That was terrible."

* And here's an earlier interview with Justice Scalia and his co-author, legal writing guru Bryan Garner. [ABA Journal]

* When Paul Clement (a former Scalia clerk) announced his resignation as U.S. Solicitor General, there was lots of speculation about where he'd be going next. Here's the answer. [National Law Journal]

Update: More about the Clement move appears at the BLT. Clement tells Tony Mauro that his GULC gig is "full-time, but temporary -- a full-time job until I get the next full-time job" (with a law firm).

Last week, speaking before a class at Harvard Law School, we vowed that we would track down the two missing Alito clerks for October Term 2008. As President Bush might say, "Mission Accomplished."

These two gents will be clerking for Justice Samuel A. Alito in October Term 2008:

1. Michael Park (Yale 2001 / Alito)

2. Andrew Oldham (Harvard 2005 / Sentelletubby)

For those of you keeping track at home, the list of OT 2008 Supreme Court law clerks is now complete. Jaynie Randall, identified as a future Alito clerk, has been moved to October Term 2009 (which is when she'll be clerking for SAA, we've been told).

Both Park and Oldham are currently attorney-advisors at the DOJ's super-powerful and prestigious Office of Legal Counsel. They don't call OLC the Finishing School for the Elect for nothing!

Yesterday we raised the possibility that Messrs. Park and Oldham, in laying low as SCOTUS clerks, were being a bit "precious." We have nothing against preciousness -- it's our stock in trade here at ATL -- but we take back the suggestion with respect to Park and Oldham. The reason the word about them took so long to get out is that they were initially told to keep the good news to themselves -- which they did, showing the discretion to be expected of Supreme Court clerks.

While we're on the subject, we reiterate this recent request, related to our attempt to build a demographic portrait of the incoming clerk class:

If you know of either (1) a clerk who is a racial or ethnic minority or (2) a clerk whose gender is not revealed by their name (we already know that incoming AMK clerk Ashley Keller is a guy), please let us know, preferably by email (subject line: "SCOTUS clerk demographics"). Thanks.

The corrected OT 2008 and OT 2009 SCOTUS clerk lists -- with Michael Park and Andrew Oldham added, and Jaynie Randall moved to OT 2009 -- appear after the jump.

Here are a few items about U.S. Supreme Court clerk hiring:

1. The justices have completed their hiring for October Term 2008. They're all done (including retired Justice O'Connor). If you were hoping to land a SCOTUS clerkship for OT 2008 and haven't heard anything, our condolences -- that ship has sailed.

2. Here are two hires not previously reported in these pages:

(a) Clerking for Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (Term not determined): Jaynie Randall (Yale 2006 / M. Patel (N.D. Cal.) / Cabranes).

(b) Clerking for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (for October Term 2009): Scott Keller (University of Texas 2007 / Kozinski).

We don't know whether Randall will be clerking for Justice Alito in OT 2008 or OT 2009. We have reason to believe that she's an OT 2009 clerk. But that would leave two unknown spots for OT 2008 in SAA's chambers, which strikes us as strange. So we are listing her as OT 2008 for the time being, until the mysteriously missing Alito clerks are identified.

(On that subject, if the outstanding Alito clerks for OT 2008 are deliberately trying to conceal their identities from the world -- perhaps thinking their fellow clerks are fit to be listed on ATL and Wikipedia, but they are somehow too "special" to be revealed -- that strikes us as rather precious and self-important. Also, their names will appear on the Court's official list of law clerks in a few weeks, making the cloak-and-dagger secrecy even more unwarranted.)

Keller, a current clerk for Judge Kozinski, will do a Bristow Fellowship in between his Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court clerkships. To the ATL readers who asked about whether Bristow Fellows had been announced, there's your answer.

3. The Clerkship Notification Blog, a tremendously helpful resource for those in the clerkship hunt, is up and running for the 2009-10 clerkship season. The main page is accessible here, and the SCOTUS clerk section is accessible here.

4. Finally, we'd like to pose the same question to you about SCOTUS clerk demographics that we posed last year:

We're interested in figuring out how many law clerks for the upcoming Supreme Court Term are women or minorities. But we don't know all these folks personally (much as we might like to). So we need your help.

If you know of either (1) a clerk who is a racial or ethnic minority or (2) a clerk whose gender is not revealed by their name (we already know that incoming AMK clerk Ashley Keller is a guy), please let us know, preferably by email (subject line: "SCOTUS clerk demographics"). Thanks.

(Some of you might find this inquiry crass. But racial and gender diversity among Supreme Court law clerks has been discussed on Capitol Hill and in the pages of the New York Times and the Legal Times. So please don't get upset at us for being curious about something that members of Congress and the mainstream media are already interested in.)

The latest lists of the OT 2008 and OT 2009 law clerks to the U.S. Supreme Court, with Randall and Keller added, appear after the jump.

Thanks to everyone who responded to our open call for Supreme Court clerk hiring news. We now know the identities of Justice David H. Souter's four law clerks for October Term 2008:

1. Erin Delaney (NYU 2007 / Guido-maniac)
2. Michael Gerber (Yale 2005 / Leval)
3. Warren Postman, (Harvard 2007 / W. Fletcher)
4. Noah Purcell (Harvard 2007 / Tatel Tot)

Congratulations to all. And if someone could put their names into Wikipedia, now that their hiring has been confirmed, that would be most appreciated.

We're still missing those last two Alito clerks. Are they playing a game of hide and seek with us? If you can give us a hint as to who they are -- or, better yet, name, rank, and feeder judge clerkship -- please email us.

Updated lists of the OT 2008 and OT 2009 SCOTUS clerks, with the DHS clerks added, after the jump.

Over a month has passed since our last update on Supreme Court clerk hiring. We hear through the grapevine that Justice David H. Souter has finally picked his law clerks for October Term 2008. And we're guessing that Justice Samuel A. Alito has too (since we've known about his first two hires for quite some time).

But we don't have any names. The SCOTUS clerk Wikipedia page and the Clerkship Notification Blog also have no hard news to pass along.

If you follow SCOTUS clerk hiring, please take a look at the lists after the jump (reprinted from last month's post). Are you aware of an OT 2008 or OT 2009 clerk who isn't listed? If so, please contact us, by email (subject line: "Supreme Court clerk hiring").

You can also post a comment to this post. But we prefer email for this subject, for verification and possible follow-up. Thanks.

Taken as a group, Supreme Court clerks can claim pretty much every honor under the sun. At One First Street, Rhodes and Marshall scholars are commonplace, law review editors-in-chief are a dime a dozen, and law school valedictorians abound.

But how many SCOTUS clerks have their own IMDb entry? Meet Isaac Lidsky (Harvard 2004 / Ambro), an attorney at the Department of Justice (Civil Appellate), who was selected last week by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as her law clerk for October Term 2008. He founded the non-profit Hope for Vision, and his bio there reads:

[Isaac] is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Thomas Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before law school, Isaac founded Poindexter Systems, a now thriving internet advertising technology company in Manhattan. Isaac has been involved in raising awareness and funding for vision research for many years. He has organized several fundraising events, has appeared in the national media to promote awareness of the cause, has testified about the need for scientific funding before Congressional bodies on numerous occasions, and has served as a mentor to younger individuals afflicted with eye diseases. He has retinitis pigmentosa.

From a tipster:

I wonder if he is the first blind law clerk on the Supreme Court. I also wonder whether he's the first clerk to have thrown out the first pitch at an MLB game.

[Before law school,] Isaac had a prior life as a child actor. His most notable role, I believe, was as Barton "Weasel" Wyzell (the new Screech) on Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

Awesome. Fay Diplomas and Sears Prizes pale in comparison next to the experience of having acted opposite Dennis Haskins (aka "Mr. Belding").

Also hired as a Supreme Court clerk, but for October Term 2009: Bessie Dewar (Yale 2006 / W. Fletcher / L. Pollak (E.D. Pa.)). She's been described to us as "brilliant," "wonderfully charismatic," and "one of nicest, most smiling people to grace the halls of the Yale Law School."

The current tally of OT 2008 and OT 2009 SCOTUS clerks, with Isaac Lidsky and Bessie Dewar added, appears after the jump.

We bring you an addendum to Monday's post about the latest in Supreme Court clerk hiring. And we're pleasantly surprised to see that we have this news before Wikipedia.

Recently hired to clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer in October Term 2008: Brianne Gorod, currently in the D.C. office of O'Melveny & Myers. Gorod is a 2005 Yale Law grad and a former clerk to the judicial tag team of Jed S. Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) and Robert A. Katzmann (2d Cir.).

Those who obsessively follows SCOTUS clerk hiring know that Judges Rakoff and Katzmann have jointly sent clerks to the Court before. But contrary to some rumors, they're not always a "package deal" when it comes to hiring (although there is a significant degree of overlap among their current and former clerks).

Judge Katzmann prefers to hire individuals who have clerked on the district court (or have some other kind of post-law school work experience), so he regularly turns to Judge Rakoff, for whom he has a great deal of respect, as a source of clerkly talent. Judge Katzmann sometimes also helps promising applicants to his own chambers to secure interviews with Judge Rakoff. Conversely, Judge Rakoff also refers and sends clerks to Judge Katzmann, as well as to other Second Circuit judges, and he has also hired some clerks after Second Circuit clerkships. In short, both judges think it's valuable for people to have both district and circuit clerkship experiences, and they try to help make that happen for their clerks. But they don't hire 100 percent of their clerks jointly.

The current tally of OT 2008 SCOTUS clerks, with Brianne Gorod added, appears after the jump.

Things have been quiet on the Supreme Court clerk hiring front. There are rumors that Justice Alito has finally finished hiring for October Term 2008, but nobody seems to know who the lucky winners are. If you know, please drop us a line.

We do, however, have some news. A tipster reports:

Justice Ginsburg just hired a 2006 UVA Grad to begin clerking summer 2009. I knew Pamela Bookman (pictured) in law school, and not only is she incredibly smart, she is remarkably fun and down to earth. Kudos to Pam!

For confirmation, see this article, which has the story of how Pam Bookman got an offer from RBG on the spot:

Even though Bookman [who is clerking for the International Court of Justice in The Hague] currently lives thousands of miles away from Washington, D.C., she was still able to arrange an in-person meeting with Ginsburg. Two weeks after receiving an e-mail from Klarman saying that Ginsburg wanted to interview her, Bookman traveled to Washington while visiting her parents during winter break. Bookman chuckled that her interview was her first time ever visiting the Supreme Court. After chatting with Ginsburg about international law, the justice offered her the job on the spot.

“It was thrilling, it was surreal,” she said. “I’m still not sure this is real.”

The current tally of OT 2008 and OT 2009 SCOTUS clerks, with Pamela Bookman added, appears after the jump.

Today's Morning Docket links to this fascinating article by one of our favorite Supreme Court correspondents, Tony Mauro. Mauro writes:

Among prominent federal appeals court judges in the 1990s, Barack Obama was known as “the one who got away.”

In 1990, Obama had been elected the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review, which made him a blazingly hot prospect as a law clerk for one of the top federal appeals judges, who in turn would almost certainly send him on to the Supreme Court as a clerk.

But with a remarkable certitude that still amazes his friends and elders, Obama said no to all that...

But the three individuals listed below didn't "get away"; they have not escaped the justices' clutches. They've all been hired to clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts in October Term 2008 (who is, by the way, now done hiring for next Term -- sorry, aspiring JGR clerks):

1. William Baude (Yale 2007 / McConnell)
2. Jeffrey Harris (Harvard 2006 / Sentelle / Silberman)
3. Erin Murphy (Georgetown 2006 / Sykes)

Will Baude (pictured) is a fellow blogger, founder of Crescat Sententia (where he once interviewed us). Jeff Harris is currently finishing up the second of two D.C. Circuit clerkships (because, you know, doing just one wasn't prestigious enough). Erin Murphy is currently a Bristow Fellow. She was, incidentally, hired by then-Judge Samuel Alito to clerk for him on the Third Circuit -- so she has actually been hired by two justices (even though she never clerked for SAA due to his intervening elevation).

Also, note the feeding by Judges Michael McConnell (10th Cir.) and superhottie Diane Sykes (7th Cir.). They're both highly-regarded judges who are reputed to be great to work for. Expect to see them feed more in the future (especially Judge McConnell, a former SCOTUS clerk himself -- having once been a SCOTUS clerk is highly correlated with feeding your own clerks).

The current tally of OT 2008 SCOTUS clerks, with the three new Roberts clerks added, appears after the jump.

The Man That Got Away [Legal Times]