Clerkship boot camp reboots; Heritage Foundation drops secrecy and loyalty pledges
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The conservative Heritage Foundation has revived an expense-paid boot camp for selected federal judicial clerks that was suspended amid criticism over its attempts to control training materials.
Those who apply for the two-day Federal Clerkship Training Academy are no longer required to keep training materials secret, the New York Times reports. Nor are applicants required to pledge that they wouldn’t use the materials “for any purpose contrary to the mission or interest of the Heritage Foundation.”
The foundation has also changed the requirement that applicants provide a statement about their understanding of originalism. Now the applicants need only describe their “jurisprudential philosophy.”
The Heritage Foundation has also revealed the three conservative judges who will be on the faculty. They are: Judge Carlos Bea of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Thomas Lee of the Utah Supreme Court, and Judge Edith Jones of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Other speakers are listed on the agenda.
John Malcolm, a Heritage Foundation official, told the New York Times that “it was never our intention to have some kind of loyalty oath.” The language was “totally unnecessary,” he acknowledged, and the intent was simply to protect the reputations of people involved.
There is no attempt to indoctrinate law students and anyone can apply he said. “The application does not say only people who have accepted clerkships with Republican-appointed judges need apply,” he told the Times.
