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Posted January 16, 2006
Because of the small number of
clerks chosen in a given year; because clerks are only chosen from the
very top of any law school's class; because current clerks participate
in the process of selecting new clerks; and because the Justices themselves
have particular school loyalties,[1]
gross numbers are probably more informative, and so the ranking below
is based on the total number of clerks placed on the Supreme Court. For
informational purposes, the approximate size, rounded to the nearest 50,
of recent graduating classes is listed in the final column.
This includes all clerks on the Supreme Court from the 1991 term through
the current 2005 term. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist's clerks were
accepted by the new Chief Justice John Roberts, and so are counted; the
clerks C.J. Roberts brought with him from the D.C. Circuit were not counted,
since they were selected in a less competitive process.
| Rank |
School |
Total number
of clerks |
Typical Class Size |
| 1 |
Harvard University |
128 |
550 |
| 2 |
Yale University |
100 |
200 |
| 3 |
University of Chicago |
65 |
200 |
| 4 |
Stanford University |
42 |
150 |
| 5 |
Columbia University |
32 |
400 |
| 6 |
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor |
21 |
350 |
| 7 |
University of Virginia |
19 |
350 |
| 8 |
New York University |
16 |
400 |
| 9 |
University of California, Berkeley |
12 |
250 |
| 10 |
University of Texas, Austin |
11 |
450 |
| 11 |
Northwestern University |
9 |
200 |
| 12 |
Duke University |
7 |
200 |
| 12 |
Georgetown University |
7 |
600 |
| 14 |
University of Notre Dame |
6 |
150 |
| 15 |
George Washington University |
5 |
400 |
| 15 |
University of Pennsylvania |
5 |
250 |
| 17 |
University of California, Los Angeles |
4 |
250 |
| 18 |
Brigham Young University |
3 |
150 |
| 18 |
University of Kansas |
3 |
150 |
| 18 |
Vanderbilt University |
3 |
200 |
| 21 |
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
2 |
250 |
| 21 |
University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill |
2 |
250 |
The following schools each graduated one student who secured a U.S. Supreme
Court clerkship between 1991 and 2005: Boston College; Cornell University;
Ohio State University; Oxford University; Pepperdine University; Rutgers
University, Newark; State University of New York, Buffalo; University
of Arizona; University of Georgia; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities;
University of Missouri, Columbia; and University of Southern California.
[1]
Justice Stevens, for example, taught at Northwestern, and often hires
Northwestern clerks; the same is true for Justice Breyer and Harvard;
Justice Ginsburg and Columbia; and Justice Scalia and Chicago. Justice
Scalia is also partial to Notre Dame.
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