Barrett Looks Beyond Harvard, Yale in Hiring First SCOTUS Clerks

New Justice Amy Coney Barrett looked beyond Harvard and Yale for new clerks while sticking mostly with ones who have already served in fellow conservatives’ Supreme Court chambers.

The 48-year-old jurist could bring much needed academic diversity to Supreme Court clerk classes, approximately half of which in recent terms went to either Harvard or Yale law. Barrett, a graduate of Notre Dame, is the only current justice not to herself have gone to those elite schools.

The two men and two women who will join Barrett for her first high court term are:

• University of Chicago Law School graduate Nick Harper, who previously clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh;
• George Washington Law grad Whitney Hermandorfer, who clerked for Justice Samuel Alito as well as Kavanaugh while he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit;
• Another Chicago alum Madeline Lansky, who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas; and
• Northwestern Law grad Brendan Duffy, who clerked for Barrett while she served on the Seventh Circuit.

It’s not unusual for newly confirmed justices to bring a current clerk with them to the high court as well as hire a clerk with previous Supreme Court experience.

The clerks will likely help Barrett prepare for arguments, the first of which will happen less than a week after her confirmation. Among the cases being argued during the November sitting are the GOP-led effort to bring down Obamacare once and for all, and yet another battle over the tension between LGBT rights and religious freedom.

All arguments are being held remotely due to the pandemic. The justices’ revised oral argument protocols mean that Barrett, as the most junior justice, will be the last to ask questions of the advocates.

Barrett’s clerks will join 37 clerks—mostly recent law graduates—at the high court this term, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s five clerks. The three remaining Democratic-appointed justices have incorporated those five into their chambers.