U.S. Supreme Court
Souter’s ‘Clerk Footprint’ Is Very Academic
Posted May 12, 2009, 12:57 pm CST
By Martha Neil
Unlike four of his current colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice David Souter was never a law professor.
Yet when he retires this summer, Souter's legacy will live on through more than 70 former clerks. And a surprising number of them are academics: roughly half, reports the National Law Journal in a lengthy article about what Souter's former clerks are doing now.
By contrast, an upcoming Vanderbilt Law Review article on former Supreme Court clerks notes that fewer than 20 percent of the former clerks of conservative justices have become academics, and co-author Harvey Rishikof describes Souter's "clerk footprint" as highly academic. A law professor at the National War College, Rishikof formerly served as administrative assistant to then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
Although Souter, before joining the court, was "a common law judge, which you would think is the opposite of an academic," he is also "just such a thoughtful person, who takes each question on its own terms, and that is what academics are supposed to do," says Heather Gerken. Now a professor at Yale Law School, she clerked for Souter more than a decade ago.
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