Slate has an interesting article defending the role of the Supreme Court law clerk:
Poor Supreme Court law clerks. Most of them finish doing the coolest job they will ever have when they are 26 years old. All they will have to remember it by is a framed photo of some old white guy in a black dress, and a bajillion-dollar signing bonus from their law firms….This month in the Atlantic, Stuart Taylor and Benjamin Wittes proposed to fire all the Supreme Court’s law clerks because they make the job of their justices far too “cushy”:resulting in way too much judicial travel and speech-giving and not enough tedious grunt work. …
If Supreme Court justices had to go it alone (or with one rather than four clerks each, as Taylor and Wittes allow for), they’d all finally learn to use the legal research tool called Lexis. They’d give fewer speeches. They would also stagnate alone in chambers with diminishing access to new ideas. They’d undoubtedly survive. But they’d be more isolated and less likely to chase down a hunch, or look at a broad range of historical or lower court sources. They’d likely find the Internet porn cases awfully confusing, too. Maybe they would also retire earlier, which is, perhaps, the hoped-for subtext of all these complaints.
The full Slate post is here.
-Posted by Bridget Crawford
