Supreme Court Litigators’ Ties to Justices Create ‘Insider Atmosphere’
Six degrees of separation is a game that could easily be played at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many Supreme Court litigators have ties to the justices or the institutions that trained them, contributing to an “insider atmosphere,” USA Today reports.
Like many of the justices, Supreme Court specialists often attended top law schools such as Harvard or Yale, clerked for a Supreme Court justice or worked in the Solicitor General’s office. Afterward, “they continued to socialize with each other, which contributes to the insider atmosphere that permeates the white marble and crimson velvet setting,” the story says.
The article gives several examples. Theodore Olson, a former solicitor general who has argued before the court 51 times, celebrates New Year’s Eve with Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the story says. Georgetown University law professor Richard Lazarus, who has argued 13 cases before the high court, was a roommate and groomsman of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Robert Bennett, who sought unsuccessfully to toss Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit against President Clinton, played poker with the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
Lazarus documented the growth of an elite group of high court litigators in a 2008 analysis. He told USA Today the close ties aren’t a problem because the court’s work is carried out through public filings and arguments.
“There’s a certain professionalism,” he told the newspaper, “and no one would think that, based on a friendship, he would get a vote in a case.”
