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Interesting article from Above the Law: https://abovethelaw.com/2020/03/donald- ... clerkship/. Not sure how believable I find it, given their overall attitude, but worth monitoring I suppose.

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:Interesting article from Above the Law: https://abovethelaw.com/2020/03/donald- ... clerkship/. Not sure how believable I find it, given their overall attitude, but worth monitoring I suppose.

The premise here seems to be that the new judges are "unqualified" for their positions, but that's just like ... objectively untrue. 40% of new COA nominees clerked SCOTUS, and 80% clerked appellate. For Obama, it was <25%, <50%. Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ral-judges

If ATL thinks people shouldn't for a right-of-center judge because of the judge's politics or methodological priors, I get that. But they should just say it, not dress it up as some credentialism complaint. The judges are high quality - JoePa just doesn't agree with them.

No idea how these clerkships will be *treated* by students going forward; basically a question of careerism vs ideological purity.

Article is not worth giving clicks to, like basically everything ATL puts out anymore. I regret reading even a sentence of it.

I have a number of gripes with Patrice's article but I'll limit myself to listing two here.

One: He and his click-bait title vastly overstate any issue he apparently perceives. His article reads as a branding of any judge appointed by Trump as an inadequate and sub-par teacher for a young lawyer. (Because learning to efficiently move through documents on Relativity from someone who has been practicing for four years will surely be a better opportunity to grow your legal skills than learning from someone with stellar credentials who has been practicing for thrice that.) Sure, Trump has thrown on judges who have gotten the opposition of their home-state senators, NQs from the ABA, or people fairly young for federal-judges standard. But, as LBJ's Hair noted in part, the vast majority are exceptionally qualified lawyers, and it's not accurate to say broadly that Trump is devaluing the federal clerkship full stop. And even some of the young judges are also widely perceived as excellent lawyers notwithstanding their age. (Note: he specifically cites an article re Judge Rushing as an example (an article in which he ironically admits how qualified she is notwithstanding her age), who was 12 years out of law school when confirmed; but Justice Sotomayor was 13 years out of law school when put on SDNY, just to put that out there.)

Second but still on a related note: The article absolutely drips of blind elitism. He presumes that because students at Harvard refuse to apply to a small class of particularly controversial Trump appointees (if you look at the Parity Project's tweets re the issue, it's clear this isn't an all-Trump-appointed-judges boycott), then it must mean that "the top students [have] take[n] themselves out of the running," thus devaluing the clerkship for those judges (and somehow therefore clerkships in general). I'm sure federal clerkships will soon become the laughing stock of post-graduate legal employment now that they won't be filled only by those so brilliant as to have been accepted to (and willing to take on the cost of) a T6 like Patrice and the students at HLS. Can you imagine a small set of federal clerkships filled with all of the morons from the lowly remainder of the T14 who got into HLS but turned it down for a merit scholarship somewhere else and still earned top grades? The horror.

LBJ's Hair wrote:The premise here seems to be that the new judges are "unqualified" for their positions, but that's just like ... objectively untrue. 40% of new COA nominees clerked SCOTUS, and 80% clerked appellate. For Obama, it was <25%, <50%. Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ral-judges

If ATL thinks people shouldn't for a right-of-center judge because of the judge's politics or methodological priors, I get that. But they should just say it, not dress it up as some credentialism complaint. The judges are high quality - JoePa just doesn't agree with them.

No idea how these clerkships will be *treated* by students going forward; basically a question of careerism vs ideological purity.

I gave it the most generous reading, which is judges like Van Dyke, who were rated "Unqualified" by the ABA--not your run of the mill judge (as pointed out, many of them are very qualified, just very conservative). Obviously ATL phrased things poorly; that's not surprising at all. Although I do wonder if the politicization of the judiciary, and the confirmation process more broadly, will impact the long-term prestige of some of these clerkships. Like, are the groups attacking some of these judges and the clerkship process going to have a long-term impact? Mostly I was interested in the concept, and this ATL article just had the general ideas of it.

From the descriptions here, it sounds like the article is pretty stupid. There's nothing wrong with the vast majority of Trump appointees. They're conservative judges who would have been appointed under almost any conservative President, and they're fine people. There are a handful whom I think are shitty judges. But they also likely would have been appointed under almost any conservative President.

This article is garbage.

I clerked for a Trump appointee. In fact, I clerked for one of the judges that Patrice listed as particularly egregious.

1) My Judge was a highly accomplished litigator, eminently qualified to be a federal judge.

2) His/her status as a “controversial” Trump appointee didn’t inhibit him/her at all from being inundated with applications from top students from HYS and throughout the T14.

3) I have never gotten any impression whatsoever from my biglaw job that my clerkship has any kind of asterisk. Maybe I’m wrong and people say things behind my back, but I have gotten plum assignments from at least 2 partners (1 liberal, 1 conservative) in large part because of my clerkship credentials. No one has ever batted an eye about who I clerked for.

4) if down the road I try to lateral and a firm doesn’t want to hire me because of who I clerked for, to be perfectly honest I don’t want to work with/for them anyway.

This article is a combination of lazy-clickbait writing and propaganda disguised as journalism. Patrice isn’t trying to raise awareness about people looking askance at Trump-appointee clerks; he’s trying to create that phenomenon.

As I said, garbage.

Anonymous User wrote:Patrice isn’t trying to raise awareness about people looking askance at Trump-appointee clerks; he’s trying to create that phenomenon.

This is exactly what it's doing - it's absolutely wishful thinking.

Like it or not, lots of appointments are (and have always been) politically motivated; some of those appointees end up ideologues, but plenty don't; and there are plenty of people who share the Trump appointees' politics (even if probably fewer at HLS than in other contexts). While I, personally, wish that Trump wasn't being so successful in appointing many of these candidates, and would probably avoid clerking for many of them (easy to say because I'd be unlikely to get the opportunity!), I don't think that's somehow undermining the very concept of the federal clerkship. The HLS student criticism Patrice draws upon also comes from one very specific source, the Harvard Parity Project, which has its own very clear political agenda (one I'm pretty sympathetic with, but not one I think characterizes all of the legal profession).

Above the law has completely gone downhill, it really happened whenever Lat stepped down (or at least, dramatically accelerated then). One of the worst websites anyone can read.

I'd hesitate to recommend clerking for a judge rated Unqualified by the ABA. Senate confirmation by the McConnell crew on a party-line vote doesn't somehow undo the Unqualified rating. There's a small handful of these that Trump appointed, which (say) Jeb Bush probably wouldn't have appointed.

There's also reason to suspect that clerking for Kavanaugh in particular may foreclose certain high-level PI positions in liberal NGOs that'd otherwise be open to a T13 grad with terrific grades and a "feeder" CoA clerkship. Kavanaugh's unique thanks to that Trumpist performance he gave before the Senate. (To be clear, I'm sure there are still plenty of liberal lawyers/law students applying to clerk for Kav, and I'm sure clerking for Kav is, overall, still a gold star that would help advance one's career. Just wanted to point out that there are likely downsides to clerking for Kav.)

But beyond the limited exceptions above, most of Trump's appointees haven't really been Trump's appointees so much as the Federalist Society's appointees. Trump's outsourced judicial selection far more than his predecessors did (he'd rather allocate more time to "Executive Time"). Most of them are conventional, conventionally-qualified jurists (if very far right-wing by historical standards). It's nuts to suggest that clerking for these judges would somehow impair one's career prospects. Plenty of conservative lawyers have clerked for liberal judges, and plenty of liberal lawyers have clerked for conservative judges. People understand clerking for a conservative judge doesn't mean you're a conservative.

How did I know the title was a Joe Patrice article before I even clicked into this thread? I'm way to the left politically myself, but that dude is just downright obnoxious. So condescending

giggaman1228 wrote:Above the law has completely gone downhill, it really happened whenever Lat stepped down (or at least, dramatically accelerated then). One of the worst websites anyone can read.

It's hilarious how they got rid of their comments section.

They have free reign now to be as stupid as can be, without anyone to call them out.

Pennoyer v. Meh wrote:Interesting article from Above the Law: https://abovethelaw.com/2020/03/donald- ... clerkship/. Not sure how believable I find it, given their overall attitude, but worth monitoring I suppose.

This ATL article is a prime of example of refusing to live in reality, on reality's terms.

This is a guy's pipe dream of what he wishes was reality.

QContinuum wrote:I'd hesitate to recommend clerking for a judge rated Unqualified by the ABA. Senate confirmation by the McConnell crew on a party-line vote doesn't somehow undo the Unqualified rating.

I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

lavarman84 wrote:

QContinuum wrote:I'd hesitate to recommend clerking for a judge rated Unqualified by the ABA. Senate confirmation by the McConnell crew on a party-line vote doesn't somehow undo the Unqualified rating.

I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

No reason to hesitate with anyone; the only one that got an unqualified due to temperament was rated by a person that volunteered on his opponent's election campaign. The ratings, like this article, are a joke.

jackshunger wrote:

lavarman84 wrote:I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

No reason to hesitate with anyone; the only one that got an unqualified due to temperament was rated by a person that volunteered on his opponent's election campaign. The ratings, like this article, are a joke.

Found the VanDyke clerk! LMK if you'd like to have your post redacted or deleted to avoid outing yourself.

QContinuum wrote:

jackshunger wrote:

lavarman84 wrote:I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

No reason to hesitate with anyone; the only one that got an unqualified due to temperament was rated by a person that volunteered on his opponent's election campaign. The ratings, like this article, are a joke.

Found the VanDyke clerk! LMK if you'd like to have your post redacted or deleted to avoid outing yourself.

Brains like that and you too could be an ABA evaluator.

jackshunger wrote:

lavarman84 wrote:

QContinuum wrote:I'd hesitate to recommend clerking for a judge rated Unqualified by the ABA. Senate confirmation by the McConnell crew on a party-line vote doesn't somehow undo the Unqualified rating.

I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

No reason to hesitate with anyone; the only one that got an unqualified due to temperament was rated by a person that volunteered on his opponent's election campaign. The ratings, like this article, are a joke.

Qualifications aside, some people may not want to clerk for a judge with views they strongly disagree with.

jackshunger wrote:

lavarman84 wrote:

QContinuum wrote:I'd hesitate to recommend clerking for a judge rated Unqualified by the ABA. Senate confirmation by the McConnell crew on a party-line vote doesn't somehow undo the Unqualified rating.

I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

No reason to hesitate with anyone; the only one that got an unqualified due to temperament was rated by a person that volunteered on his opponent's election campaign. The ratings, like this article, are a joke.

I think there are very valid reasons to hesitate with judges who were rated as unqualified because of their personal character until they've had at least a few classes of clerks who can give insight on what they're like as bosses. But I put a lot more stock in clerking for a boss who will make the experience enjoyable than some.

Of course, I'm not in the clerkship hunt. But I can say having clerked for two judges who were wonderful bosses and having worked with people who clerked for judges who weren't so great, I am quite happy with that decision.

I mean, as a non-Christian Clerkship applicant, it's starting to become clear why some of these judges were rated "Unqualified". https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1249068473780584448

lavarman84 wrote:

jackshunger wrote:

lavarman84 wrote:

QContinuum wrote:I'd hesitate to recommend clerking for a judge rated Unqualified by the ABA. Senate confirmation by the McConnell crew on a party-line vote doesn't somehow undo the Unqualified rating.

I might hesitate for the people who were rated unqualified based on temperament. But I wouldn't hesitate with the people who are "unqualified" due to not meeting the number of years in practice requirement.

No reason to hesitate with anyone; the only one that got an unqualified due to temperament was rated by a person that volunteered on his opponent's election campaign. The ratings, like this article, are a joke.

I think there are very valid reasons to hesitate with judges who were rated as unqualified because of their personal character until they've had at least a few classes of clerks who can give insight on what they're like as bosses. But I put a lot more stock in clerking for a boss who will make the experience enjoyable than some.

Of course, I'm not in the clerkship hunt. But I can say having clerked for two judges who were wonderful bosses and having worked with people who clerked for judges who weren't so great, I am quite happy with that decision.

It's hard to put any stock into an unqualified rating written by someone who had an obvious conflict of interest and any faith in an organization that chose to ignore it while publishing a partisan screed as its rating.

Walker's opinion is also fine, if rhetorically florid; banning drive-in church services while allowing beer barns is absurd.

jackshunger wrote:It's hard to put any stock into an unqualified rating written by someone who had an obvious conflict of interest and any faith in an organization that chose to ignore it while publishing a partisan screed as its rating.

It's clear that you're not putting any stock in that particular decision, but I don't share that opinion. And before you try and paint me as just a biased partisan, I defended Trump appointees earlier in this thread.

Walker's opinion is also fine, if rhetorically florid; banning drive-in church services while allowing beer barns is absurd.

It's not fine. It is so very far from fine. Can an opinion from a federal court violate the Establishment Clause? Because if it can, that one comes dangerously close. I actually think I agree with the outcome (I'd have to know more about the facts of the case). But it's not the outcome that troubles me. It's the lack of judgment in writing that opinion the way he did.

Judges are supposed to be objective, neutral decision makers. That opinion did not come off as objective or neutral. I hope as Judge Walker "matures" as a judge that he comes to see how important optics are when drafting his decisions. That'll be especially important when he's on the D.C. Circuit.

lavarman84 wrote:It's not fine. It is so very far from fine. Can an opinion from a federal court violate the Establishment Clause? Because if it can, that one comes dangerously close. I actually think I agree with the outcome (I'd have to know more about the facts of the case). But it's not the outcome that troubles me. It's the lack of judgment in writing that opinion the way he did.

Judges are supposed to be objective, neutral decision makers. That opinion did not come off as objective or neutral. I hope as Judge Walker "matures" as a judge that he comes to see how important optics are when drafting his decisions. That'll be especially important when he's on the D.C. Circuit.

The greatest danger isn't so much that the opinion at least arguably violates the Establishment Cause (which I think it does, but which I'm pretty sure the current SCOTUS would rule 5-4 that it doesn't because JUDICIAL FREE SPEECH or something). The greatest danger is that the opinion, as written, undermines the legitimacy of the judicial branch as a whole. Judges used to be very cognizant of the fact that the the judiciary's pretty short on the "hard power" front, so despite being unelected, in a very real sense judges rely on the public's willingness to respect and obey their decisions way more than the other two branches do.

If you get enough judges handing down these "Christian America" screeds in their rulings, the entire judicial branch is gonna lose legitimacy pretty damn quickly and the entire republic will be at risk (or more accurately, even greater risk than it's already under now).

But going back to the clerking question - yeah, I'd absolutely not recommend anyone I care about clerking for this zealot.

Before 2016, would you have recommended a friend you care about to clerk for, e.g., O'Scannlain / Thapar / Sutton / Thompson etc, or is your anti-rec unique to Judge Walker and similar recent appointees? I understand many on this board would probably not want to clerk (or want their friends to clerk) for a socially conservative judge, but I'm not sure that's an especially new phenomenon, ABA evaluations and, uh, for some reason the establishment clause, aside.

lavarman84 wrote:

jackshunger wrote:It's hard to put any stock into an unqualified rating written by someone who had an obvious conflict of interest and any faith in an organization that chose to ignore it while publishing a partisan screed as its rating.

It's clear that you're not putting any stock in that particular decision, but I don't share that opinion. And before you try and paint me as just a biased partisan, I defended Trump appointees earlier in this thread.

Walker's opinion is also fine, if rhetorically florid; banning drive-in church services while allowing beer barns is absurd.

It's not fine. It is so very far from fine. Can an opinion from a federal court violate the Establishment Clause? Because if it can, that one comes dangerously close. I actually think I agree with the outcome (I'd have to know more about the facts of the case). But it's not the outcome that troubles me. It's the lack of judgment in writing that opinion the way he did.

Judges are supposed to be objective, neutral decision makers. That opinion did not come off as objective or neutral. I hope as Judge Walker "matures" as a judge that he comes to see how important optics are when drafting his decisions. That'll be especially important when he's on the D.C. Circuit.

I thought the MPRE existed so that future lawyers would understand why conflicts of interest are important, but whatever, you do you. Helps me out anyway if otherwise talented people are refusing to apply to clerkships.

An opinion from a judge cannot violate the Establishment Clause, and running through the history of Christianity in this country is hardly un-objective when describing the unconstitutionality of banning services on the most important celebration of the year for adherents.

But this conversation is getting quite political, and ignoring the point of this thread, which was to point out Joe Patrice is an idiot, so have a good one.