Supreme Ambitions by David Lat Read Free Book Online Page B

New York, both from Queens, even—but I felt there was something Amit was hiding from me, something that made me uneasy. I resolved to keep an eye on him. Maybe I just felt threatened by him because I viewed him as my biggest competition for Judge Stinson’s favor. Amit had won the National Spelling Bee as a child. Would that kind of quirky honor catch the eye of a justice or a clerk skimming through Supreme Court clerkship applications?
    I felt more at ease upon meeting James Hogan, who had a firm but not crushing handshake and a bright, easy smile. He could also be in the running for a SCOTUS clerkship, as a graduate of Boalt Hall, the judge’s alma mater. His impressive height and striking good looks certainly wouldn’t hurt him. It seemed to me, based on anecdotal observation,that Supreme Court clerks tended to be better-looking than average; perhaps the justices, faced with so many excellent résumés, used looks as a tie-breaker.
    For whatever reason, I didn’t feel as immediately competitive with James as I did with Amit. Maybe it was because James and I were so different; he seemed so relaxed, so Californian, and so tall. Compared to James, Amit and I looked like dark neurotic dwarfs.
    I didn’t know what to make of my third co-clerk, Larry Krasner. Maybe I was reading too much into the fact that he graduated from a less highly ranked law school—Loyola Law School, based here in Los Angeles—but he didn’t have a very academic air. Maybe he was having a bad day or something, but he greeted me with so little enthusiasm, it seemed like he didn’t even want to be in chambers.
    I spent the rest of my first day with Janet Lee, the outgoing clerk that I would be replacing. Janet, whom I had briefly met when I interviewed with the judge, was also originally from New York, although she had gone to law school at Stanford. She was now moving back to New York to work at Wachtell Lipton.
    Janet described my specific duties as a clerk, which could be divided up into three broad areas. First, in advance of each oral argument “calendar,” or one-week period in which Judge Stinson would hear cases in court, I would help the judge get ready for the arguments. This would involve writing a “bench memorandum,” a memo summarizing the facts and legal issues of a case and offering a recommendation for how the case should be decided, and preparing a “bench book,” a binder containing the memo and various key documents relevant to the case. (Janet referred to the making of the bench book—which involved highlighting the documents, putting them in a particular order, and sticking colorful tabs all over them—as “arts and crafts.”) I would also meet with the judge to discuss the cases orally during “review week,” the week immediately prior to the calendar week.
    â€œHere’s one thing you must remember,” Janet said. “When you first get a new case, you need to make sure the court has jurisdiction to hearit. Judge Stinson is very particular about jurisdiction.”
    I knew this from having talked about it with the judge during my interview and from the judge’s writing in the area. Jurisdiction concerns the court’s authority to hear a particular case. There are all sorts of reasons, some quite technical, as to why a court might lack jurisdiction—and if there’s a “jurisdictional defect,” the case must be dismissed.
    â€œFor example,” Janet added, “take the notice of appeal—the statement filed by the losing party in the trial court indicating it plans to appeal. If the notice of appeal is not timely filed, then the Ninth Circuit can’t hear the case, no matter how important the legal issues at stake. It must dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.”
    I nodded; this was all familiar to me. A few years ago, the Supreme Court had decided a case making clear that a late-filed notice of appeal