Law clerk A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person, generally someone who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial clerks often play significant ...

s have assisted the justices of the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. Each justice is permitted to have between three and four law clerks per Court term. Most persons serving in this capacity are recent

law school A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, ...

graduates (and typically graduated at the top of their class). Among their many functions, clerks do legal research that assists justices in deciding what cases to accept and what questions to ask during oral arguments, prepare memoranda, and draft

orders Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of ...

and

opinions An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements. Definition A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with ...

. After retiring from the Court, a justice may continue to employ a law clerk, who may be assigned to provide additional assistance to an active justice or may assist the retired justice when sitting by designation with a lower court.

Table of law clerks

The following is a table of law clerks serving the associate justice holding Supreme Court seat 10 (the Court's tenth associate justice seat by order of creation), which was established on April 10, 1869 by the

41st Congress The 41st United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1869, ...

through the

Judiciary Act of 1869 The Judiciary Act of 1869 (41st Congress, Sess. 1, ch. 22, , enacted April 10, 1869), formally An Act to amend the Judicial System of the United States and sometimes called the Circuit Judges Act of 1869, provided that the Supreme Court of the Unite ...

(). This seat is currently occupied by Justice

Clarence Thomas Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1 ...

Notes

References

Additional sources

* Baier, Paul R. (1973). "The Law Clerks: Profile of an Institution," ''Vanderbilt L. Rev.'' 26: 1125–77. * "Finding Aid to Thurgood Marshall Papers,
Library of Congress
list of clerks. * "Georgia Law Alumni Who Have Clerked for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
Advocate
Spring/Summer 2004 (listing 6 names). * Judicial Clerkship Handbook
USC Gould Law School
2013-2014, p. 33, Appendix B. * "List of law clerks,

Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas Law School. Retrieved August 11, 2016. * Newland, Charles A. (June 1961). "Personal Assistants to the Supreme Court Justices: The Law Clerks," ''Oregon L. Rev.'' 40: 306–07.
News of Supreme Court clerks
University of Virginia Law School, list of clerks, 2004-2018.
University of Michigan clerks to the Supreme Court, 1991-2017
University of Michigan Law School Web site (2016). Retrieved September 20, 2016. * Ward, Artemus and David L. Weiden (2006). ''Sorcerers' Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court''. New York, NY: New York University Press. , .

External links

Supreme Court of the United States
official website
SCOTUS Justices: How Do Their Clerks Help Them?
Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal, by PBS NewsHour, via youtube {{SCOTUS horizontal Seat 10 Supreme Court of the United States people