US Supreme Court Law Clerks as Information Sources

Abstract

Justices use information from attorneys, amici, and the solicitor general to learn about cases. One source that has gone with little empirical scrutiny is their law clerks. I validate a measure of clerk preferences and analyze the role of information conveyed by clerks in shaping the justices’ votes on the merits. I report asymmetric support for the theory that clerks get what they want when they craft credible signals: the results support the conclusion that conservative clerks can influence vote direction. These findings bolster understanding of the role of information in hierarchical relationships and shine light on clerks’ roles.

The Sum of its Parts: How Supreme Court Justices Disparately Shape Attention to Their Opinions

“…There is also some evidence that certain justices author lengthier opinions than their peers (Black and Spriggs, 2008). Beyond this, an intriguing study demonstrates that justices vary in how they rely on clerks—with conservative clerks, for instance, exerting an exceptionally large influence on a justice's final vote and shaping the language of his or her opinions (Kromphardt, 2015). Yet other work suggests that justices write differently depending on how they rely on their clerks (Wahlbeck, Spriggs, and Sigelman, 2002).…”

“…There is ample evidence that the justices vary in their behavior on the bench based on their identity. Prior work suggests that the justices are asymmetrically influenced by their clerks (see Kromphardt, 2015, 2017; Ward and Weiden, 2006). Existing research also demonstrates differences in how much language the justices adopt from party and amicus curiae briefs (Corley, 2008; Collins, Corley, and Hamner, 2015) as well as lower court opinions (Corley, Collins, and Calvin, 2011).…”

“…A substantial amount of evidence also demonstrates that justices vary in the extent to which they rely on their clerks in drafting opinions. While most justices use all of their clerks to write the first draft of an opinion, there is substantial variation in how individual justices rely on their clerks to produce the final opinion (Kromphardt, 2015; Wahlbeck, Spriggs, and Sigelman, 2002; Ward and Weiden, 2006). While it is difficult to ascertain how relying on clerks impacts the exact construction of opinions, it is widely accepted that a greater reliance on clerks promulgates greater variation in the attributes of a justice’s opinions.…”

Seasonal Affective Disorder: Clerk Training and the Success of Supreme Court Certiorari Petitions

“…The study of law clerks has explored various avenues of influence from authoring opinions and preparing justices for oral argument (Ward and Weiden ), to the ideological congruity between clerks and justices (Baum and Ditslear ; Ditslear and Baum ; but see Kromphardt ), to the influence of clerk ideology on the decisions of the justice who hired her (Brenner and Palmer ; Peppers and Zorn ). Another line of literature examines the clerks’ role in reviewing cert .…”

“…Finally, we recorded the names of the judges on the lower court that wrote opinions in each case. Based on new research on this issue (Kromphardt ), we assume law clerks will take the ideology of the judge they clerked for the year before they came to the Supreme Court. The most common prior experience for Supreme Court clerks is with a federal appellate judge, though a few clerks worked with federal district court judges or state supreme court justices .…”