« Ind. Decisions - Deju vu? "IU trustees do not have reveal details of Knight's firing " | Main | Ind. Courts - $18 million Marion County jury verdict against local law firm »

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Courts - "Women Suddenly Scarce Among Justices’ Clerks" [Updated]

A front-page story by Linda Greenhouse in today's NY Times is headed: "Women Suddenly Scarce Among Justices’ Clerks." Some quotes from the beginning of the report:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — Everyone knows that with the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the number of female Supreme Court justices fell by half. The talk of the court this summer, with the arrival of the new crop of law clerks, is that the number of female clerks has fallen even more sharply.

Just under 50 percent of new law school graduates in 2005 were women. Yet women account for only 7 of the 37 law clerkships for the new term, the first time the number has been in the single digits since 1994, when there were 4,000 fewer women among the country’s new law school graduates than there are today.

Last year at this time, there were 14 female clerks, including one, Ann E. O’Connell, who was hired by William H. Rehnquist, the chief justice who died before the term began. His successor, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., then hired Ms. O’Connell.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who joined the court in January, hired Hannah Smith, who had clerked for him on the appeals court where he had previously served. So by the end of the term, and counting Ms. O’Connell twice, there were 16 women among the 43 law clerks hired by last term’s justices.

After years in which more than a third of the clerks were women, the sudden drop was a hot topic this summer on various law-related blogs. Word of the justices’ individual hiring decisions spread quickly among those for whom the comings and goings of law clerks are more riveting than any offering on reality television.

Who are these young lawyers who are the subject of such interest? They do not, contrary to myth — propagated in part by law clerks themselves — run the court. They do play a significant role in screening new cases, though, and they help their justices in preparing for argument and in drafting opinions.

While their pay is a modest $63,335 for their year of service, a Supreme Court clerkship is money in the bank: the clerks are considered such a catch that law firms are currently paying each one they hire a signing bonus of $200,000.

The story is accompanied by a chart showing percentage of female clerks hired by justices since 2000.

What about Indiana? As best the ILB can tell, the Supreme Court's clerks are fairly evenly split between men and women.

The ILB took the database of state employees made available by the Indianapolis Star and produced a list of individuals employed by the Indiana Supreme Court with the job title "law clerk". (These individuals would have been state employees as of 6/30/06.)

It appears, however, that the job title "law clerk" covers several individuals not traditionally thought of as "law clerks."

So, knowing from past experience that law clerks' phone numbers are not listed in the state phone book, the ILB cross-checked the Star list against the state phone list and omitted every potential "law clerk" name that had a listed phone number. The result was 12 names, five women and seven men.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 30, 2006 08:04 AM
Posted to Courts in general