Kavanaugh’s Chambers Are a Big Pipeline for Trump Circuit Judges

Justice Brett Kavanaugh has emerged as a major source of judicial nominees in the second Trump administration, with the president repeatedly looking to the justice’s former clerks to fill influential appellate court vacancies.

Three of four new appellate judges so far in President Donald Trump’s second term clerked earlier in their career for Kavanaugh, including Rebecca Taibleson, who was confirmed to the Seventh Circuit on Monday.

Judges Whitney Hermandorfer and Jennifer Mascott, who both clerked for Kavanaugh while he was on the DC Circuit, were confirmed to seats on the Sixth and Third Circuits earlier this year.

The selections could be an indicator of the influence Kavanaugh is developing not just at the Supreme Court but across the judiciary, said Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar, who supported Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.

“He’s the middle of the court and now perhaps increasingly it’s possible he’ll become the middle of the judiciary more generally,” Amar said.

Kavanaugh has long been lauded for his commitment to hiring female clerks. More than half of his 48 hires during his time on the DC Circuit were women, according to a fact sheet published by the White House during his confirmation hearings. During his first year on the Supreme Court he became the first justice in history to hire an all-female clerk staff.

In addition to dominating Trump’s appellate court picks so far, the list of Kavanaugh’s former clerks includes partners at several high-powered law firms, a Harvard professor, and at least two additional women who’ve followed him into the federal judiciary. Those are Judge Sarah Pitlyk, who sits in the Eastern District of Missouri, and Judge Britt Grant, whom Trump appointed to the Eleventh Circuit in 2018. Another former clerk, Judge Justin Walker, now sits on the DC Circuit where Kavanaugh served for more than a decade.

“This statistic suggests that Judge Kavanaugh has a very good eye for young legal talent,” Amar said. “Second, that he’s been particularly good at mentoring young women. He’s had more female law clerks than most, and he supports them and mentors them.”

As of last year, only about a third of sitting federal judges were women, according to the American Bar Association.

Following his 2018 Supreme Court nomination, psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford alleged Kavanaugh assaulted her in the early 1980s while both were teenagers in Maryland. Two other women later came forward with separate allegations of assault.

Kavanaugh vehemently denied any wrongdoing and the Senate ultimately confirmed him in a 50-48 vote. Taibleson and Mascott were among Kavanaugh’s former clerks who testified on his behalf at his confirmation hearing.

“I know of no federal judge who has more effectively supported women in this profession than Brett Kavanaugh,” Taibleson wrote in a prepared statement.

More than a dozen women who’d clerked for him on the DC Circuit also signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying he’d helped launch their legal careers and calling him “one of the strongest advocates in the federal judiciary” for women lawyers.

Taibleson, who previously led the appellate division in the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, is the 14th of Trump’s judicial nominees to secure confirmation.

Two other appellate court nominees, Joshua Dunlap and Eric Tung, are awaiting votes in the Senate.