Harvard Leads Among Supreme Court Law Clerks

With a little help from its former dean Elena Kagan, Harvard Law School has edged out Yale Law School in the race for the most Supreme Court clerks this term. The Court today released the official list of clerks and their law schools and prior clerkships, confirming what's been available at Above the Law and elsewhere.

The sitting justices have four clerks each, for a total of 36, but we're counting the three clerks for the three retired justices, who often are detailed to other justices and perform equivalent tasks. Of those 39, Harvard can boast 10 -- including three hired last week by Kagan -- and Yale has nine. Duke and University of Virginia weigh in at three each.

As for feeder judges, Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit comes in first with six Garlandistas, as they are known, working for current and retired justices. The 6th Circuit's Jeff Sutton and D.C.'s Doug Ginsburg provided three each, and others including the 9th's Stephen Reinhardt and Alex Kozinski provided two, as did the 2nd's Robert Katzmann, D.C.'s Brett Kavanaugh and Janice Rogers Brown, and the 4th's J. Harvie Wilkinson III.

Comments

[Anna]

The numbers of Harvard grads going for a clerkship is low compared to Yale. It is not accurate to compare 10 out of 550, to 9 out of 200.

[Peter G]

Tony, Harvard Law graduates more than three times as many JDs per year (about 600) as does Yale Law (under 200). With Harvard having 10 of 39 clerks and Yale 9, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Yale as three times as many, proportionally, as Harvard?