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Monday, October 22, 2007

Courts - "For the elite of the Supreme Court Bar, this is the Gilded Age. Or call it the Age of the Guild"

The is the introduction to Tony Mauro's article today in Legal Times, headed "New Study Suggests Veteran Advocates Sway Supreme Court." Some quotes from the beginning of the lengthy article:

The Court's docket continues to shrink. Yet dramatic new research by Georgetown University Law Center professor Richard Lazarus shows that more and more of the Court's cases are brought and argued by the seasoned veterans who have honed Supreme Court practice into a fine, and exclusive, art form. Last term, fully 44 percent of the nongovernment petitions that were granted review by the Court were filed by such veteran advocates. In 1980, that number was less than 6 percent.

The justices and their law clerks, it seems clear, pay special attention to the briefs and arguments of these virtuosos of the bar. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., after all, was once one of them, arguing 39 cases to the Court in his days as an appellate lawyer in the private and public sector. And Lazarus cites a 2004 survey published in the Journal of Law & Politics indicating that 88 percent of law clerks openly acknowledged giving extra consideration to briefs filed by what one called the "inner circle" of the Supreme Court Bar. The clerks, who play a crucial role in screening incoming cases for their justices, often then go to work for these same firms, garnering hiring bonuses that this year have reached $250,000.

But this is not just a "rich get richer" tale about lawyers. Lazarus, founder of the university's Supreme Court Institute, goes a step further to make the claim that the increasing dominance of the veteran Supreme Court Bar is beginning to have an impact on the Court's doctrine.

The study, set for publication soon in the Georgetown University Law Journal, draws a direct and controversial connection between the growth of the Supreme Court Bar and the Court's widely noted new pro-business tilt.

The WSJ Blog has picked up on this, in its usual entertaining fashion. Peter Lattman's post is headed "Are the Supremes Starstruck Like the Rest of Us?"

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 22, 2007 11:20 AM
Posted to Courts in general