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New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:28 pm

Several judges have recently gotten out of the business of feeding clerks to SCOTUS for one reason or another. Does anyone have the scoop on who's stepped into the vacuum? Or who's likely to in the next few years?

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:24 am

Depends on which side of the aisle you’re looking at. There are some well-developed feeders (like Srinivasan, Feinerman, Oetken, Elrod, Pillard, Pryor, Livingston etc.) who are younger but not “new.” As for newcomers who will feed in the future, a few have fed one or two in the past few years and are young enough and may send more. For liberals, think judges like Friedland, Pillard, Lohier, Watford, Barron, Liu, Cuellar, and Brown Jackson. For conservatives, there are a ton of newer appointees, like Katsas, Willet, Ho, Oldham, Eid, Newsom, Larsen, Barrett, Bibas etc.

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:11 am

Among the conservative judges listed in the last post, Katsas will have the strongest numbers for awhile, but he also has hired four or five people who were already heading to clerk at SCOTUS so that inflates his numbers a bit. Still, one of his more recent hires will be clerking for the Chief Justice afterwards, so he is now sending clerks to more than just Justice Thomas. Judge Oldham also hired someone who will be clerking for Justice Gorsuch in a couple years. And one of Judge Larsen's clerks will be clerking for Justice Kavanaugh next term. (Both the Oldham and the Larsen clerk also clerked for Judge Sutton.)

I fully expect Judge Rao to start feeding relatively soon, thanks to her position on the DC Circuit. Judge Grant has at least one clerk headed to Justice Kavanaugh next term, but that clerk had been with then-Judge Kavanaugh on the DC Circuit. But I'm not sure that we will see any one or two of these new conservative CoA judges establish themselves as dominant feeders anytime soon. There are just too many of them who will be very good judges and would like to be feeder judges and can attract plausible SCOTUS-clerk candidates; I expect several of them to feed a clerk or two in the near future but I'm not sure most of them will feed more than a clerk or two. So it may take some time to know who the new top feeders are.

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by lavarman84 » Wed Apr 17, 2019 3:36 pm

Oldham and Ho? That's sad. They both suck imo.
(Not speaking to them as bosses; speaking about them as judges)

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Fri Apr 19, 2019 11:42 pm

Anyone have more insight on the liberal side of things?

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Apr 20, 2019 12:48 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Anyone have more insight on the liberal side of things?
I don’t think much will change on the liberal side until the next Democratic presidency. It’s still primarily the D.C. Circuit and there’s been less turnover because Kavanaugh, who along with Garland was one of the two biggest feeders of the last decade, fed mostly (but not exclusively) to the conservatives.

Of the younger Obama non-CADC appointees, Friedland has fed the most clerks so far and probably has the best shot of emerging as a “big time feeder” over the next decade. Owens and Watford are the two other CA9 names to watch. Barron on CA1 as well. Surprisingly, Obama didn’t put anyone with feeder credentials on CA2 which has historically had several feeders.

A trend to watch on both sides, but especially the liberal side, is non-COA feeder judges. I wouldn’t be surprised if people like Chhabria (N.D. Cal.), Liu (Cal. S.C.), Jackson (D.D.C.), and the Obama SDNY judges who clerked for SCOTUS end up feeding clerks as often as the top non-CADC appellate judges. These clerks will also have a traditional COA clerkship but their COA judge may be less of an established feeder than than non-COA judge.

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Apr 20, 2019 1:01 pm

In terms of district court feeders, I would also include Cooper, Moss, and Boasberg on D.D.C. Boasberg might actually even do better with Kavanaugh on the Court. Boasberg had already sent clerks to Kennedy and the Chief in addition to the liberals, and he used to joint-hire with Kavanaugh sometimes when Kavanaugh was on the D.C. Circuit, so he will likely have an inside track to that chambers as well. Although he is an Obama appointee, he also hires conservative clerks, so there's no reason to think Kavanaugh won't consider them, especially since almost all of his clerks have feeder circuit clerkships as well.

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Sat Apr 20, 2019 4:43 pm

I'm not even sure if true "liberal feeders" exist right now, other than Katzmann-Rakoff and Fletcher, to be quite honest. Friedland, Owens, Barron, Liu have what, a couple each? But over the same time period so have like, a number of Second Circuit judges. None of whom we would consider "feeders." (As someone else mentioned, the SDNY judges are frequently paired with DC Circuit clerkships.)

This isn't to discount the value of the clerkship with any of those judges obviously. Just to say that the non-DC Circuit "feeder" phenomenon seems disproportionately a conservative thing (although their placement isn't limited to conservative judges).

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:28 pm

Good observation, though I think this is the natural ebb and flow of whose party has recently had effective nominations to the D.C. Circuit, and which prominent judges are relatively youthful/still rising. The tendency seems to be that judges peak by the time they're eligible for senior status, and very few continue to feed with high frequency into their mid-70s.

So, for example, in the era around the end of the George W. Bush administration and the early Obama years (before Obama's 2013 nominations), the only prominent/rising liberal judges on the D.C. Circuit were Garland and Tatel, and so the non-D.C. judges had more room to feed. This was when Katzmann, Fletcher, Reinhardt, and Calabresi did a lot of their peak "feeding."

By contrast, around the end of the Clinton Administration/early GWB Administration there were relatively few younger/rising conservatives on the D.C. Circuit. If you look at this list of OT 1994-2003 feeders, many of the most prominent conservatives were non-D.C. Circuit (Luttig on 4th, Wilkinson on 4th, Kozinski on 9th, Posner on 7th, O'Scannlain on 9th) and most of the liberals were also non-D.C. (Calabresi, Boudin, Reinhardt, Breyer) because Tatel was the only well established D.C. lib before the mid-2000s - Garland had only sent 5 clerks to the Court in his first 6 years on the Circuit.

Today, three of Obama's four nominations to the D.C. Circuit, Srinivasan, Pillard and Millett, were well known and respected in the prestige D.C. legal community, so it's not surprising they get the Justices' ears/eyes. For whatever reason, Wilkins has not hired the kind of clerk to attract the Justices, as has been the case with Judith Rogers. As to the reasons why, that is above my pay grade of speculation...

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Mon Apr 22, 2019 5:20 pm

Anonymous User wrote:Good observation, though I think this is the natural ebb and flow of whose party has recently had effective nominations to the D.C. Circuit, and which prominent judges are relatively youthful/still rising. The tendency seems to be that judges peak by the time they're eligible for senior status, and very few continue to feed with high frequency into their mid-70s.

So, for example, in the era around the end of the George W. Bush administration and the early Obama years (before Obama's 2013 nominations), the only prominent/rising liberal judges on the D.C. Circuit were Garland and Tatel, and so the non-D.C. judges had more room to feed. This was when Katzmann, Fletcher, Reinhardt, and Calabresi did a lot of their peak "feeding."

By contrast, around the end of the Clinton Administration/early GWB Administration there were relatively few younger/rising conservatives on the D.C. Circuit. If you look at this list of OT 1994-2003 feeders, many of the most prominent conservatives were non-D.C. Circuit (Luttig on 4th, Wilkinson on 4th, Kozinski on 9th, Posner on 7th, O'Scannlain on 9th) and most of the liberals were also non-D.C. (Calabresi, Boudin, Reinhardt, Breyer) because Tatel was the only well established D.C. lib before the mid-2000s - Garland had only sent 5 clerks to the Court in his first 6 years on the Circuit.

Today, three of Obama's four nominations to the D.C. Circuit, Srinivasan, Pillard and Millett, were well known and respected in the prestige D.C. legal community, so it's not surprising they get the Justices' ears/eyes. For whatever reason, Wilkins has not hired the kind of clerk to attract the Justices, as has been the case with Judith Rogers. As to the reasons why, that is above my pay grade of speculation...
Wilkins, Rogers, and Henderson haven't fed as often as the rest of the DC Circuit because they came to the bench from outside of the small and incredibly insular world of elite DC litigators. Wilkins made his career in the public defender's office and served on the district court. Rogers had a short DOJ stint but came up through local politics and served for many years on the DC (local) Court of Appeals. Henderson lived and practiced in the Carolinas and had never worked in DC until her appointment (I'm actually not sure how Henderson ever emerged a candidate for CADC). Unlike most of their colleagues, none clerked for SCOTUS, none had a high-level DOJ position, none was well-known as a SCOTUS litigator, and none was a rainmaking partner at a top DC firm (Wilkins came closest as a partner at Venable). Those are the types of people who are best positioned to get the Justices' attention and accordingly will get the most applications from tippy-top students.

It's actually a bit concerning that fewer judges like this trio are being appointed to the DC Circuit. Wilkins and Rogers especially have valuable backgrounds in the less glamorous side of the court's docket--all the criminal and local matters that come up from DDC that are decidedly less sexy than agency appeals but can present quite important questions of law. A court full of Justices-in-waiting doesn't fully serve the district's needs.

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Re: New Feeders?

Post by Anonymous User » Thu May 02, 2019 3:51 pm

Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Kozinski were good for at least 4-5 clerks a year. It is conceivable that some of the newer conservative appointees (esp. Katsas) will help fill that void. But in the near future you're more likely to see existing feeders feed even more, at least until the newer judges start getting some of the top applicants after 1L. I think Sutton, Wilkinson, and Griffith will become super-feeders--maybe not to the level that Kavanaugh was, but close to it. Pryor will also get a bump. The liberal hierarchy won't change much. Sri/Katzmann/Garland/Tatel will still dominate, Friedland/Fletcher/Pillard will get a few every so often.

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