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Incoming Supreme Court Clerks List Dominated by Yale Law

Summary: The Supreme Court clerks for 2016-2017 have been announced.

The incoming group of Supreme Court clerks will begin their duties in October, and from the list released recently, it appears as if going to Yale or Harvard Law will pay off in a big way.

Yale Law saw graduates take 11 out of 32 current Supreme Court clerkship spots. Harvard Law graduates were next in line with seven spots taken.

Each of the eight current justices have four clerks. The two retired justices have one clerk each.

Men also dominated the clerkship list for the eight current justices. Nineteen men were chosen as opposed to 13 women. According to Law 360, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy chose an all-male staff, and Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito chose predominately male clerk staffs.

The clerks who will serve the two retired justices are both women.

Besides Yale and Harvard, this fall’s clerks graduated from Stanford, University of Virginia, Duke, Georgetown, New York University, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Hawaii also saw one graduate obtain a clerk position. In a move that Law 360 described as “surprising,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor hired 2008 University of Hawaii graduate Kamaile A.N. Turcan to clerk for her. This is the first time the school has ever seen one of its graduates serve a Supreme Court Justice.

2016-2017 Supreme Court Clerks:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts: Thomas S. Burnett, Marguerite B. Colson, Rachel G. Miller-Ziegler, and Conor M. Reardon

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy: Alex Harris, William Perdue, J.J. Snidow, and Thomas Sprankling

Justice Clarence Thomas: Andrew N. Ferguson, Kasdin M. Mitchell, Justin L. Raynor, and Jacob T. Spencer

Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg: Subash S. Iyer, Hajin Kim, Beth C. Neitzel, and Parker A. Rider-Longmaid

Justice Stephen G. Breyer: Daniel E. Herz-Roiphe, Denise Labert Drake, Brian M. Richardson, and Rachel G. Shalev

Justice Samuel Alito: Joel Alicea, Benjamin J. Cassady, Nicole C. Frazer, and Alex Potapov

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: Kirti Datia, Alex C. Hemmer, Kamaile A.N. Turcan, and Tiffany Wright

Justice Elena Kagan: Elizabeth Bewley, Gerard Cedrone, Ben Eidelson, and Betsey Henthorne

Teresa Reed from Stanford will clerk for retired Justice Paul Stevens, and Edwina A. Clarke from Yale will clerk for retired Justice David H. Souter.

What do you think of the 2016 list? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Law 360

Graphic courtesy of NBC News

Teresa Lo: