The Volokh Conspiracy

Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent

About The Volokh Conspiracy Editorial Independence Who we are Books Volokh Daily Email Archives Search DMCA RSS

Supreme Court Clerks Who Become Law Professors (2012-2026)

Josh Blackman | 10.29.2026 11:28 PM

Yesterday, I wrote about the lateral hiring market. Here, I want to focus on the entry-level hiring market. Since 2012, the number of entry-level hires has dipped to the low 60s and spiked to the mid 140s. Professor Sarah Lawsky has carefully tracked these numbers over the years through a series of detailed hiring spreadsheets: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Lawsky tracks how many entry-level hires completed Supreme Court clerkships. (This category does not record already hired law professors who are subsequently hired for Supreme Court clerkships.) I thought it might be worthwhile to dig into the numbers a bit more. Moreover, to continue my prior post on laterals, I wanted to track how often former SCOTUS clerks moved to other institutions. You can see the details in this spreadsheet, which tracks hires of SCOTUS clerks between 2012 and 2026. Please let me know if I am missing any names or made any errors.

How many academics has each Justice "fed"? Counting is actually a bit tricky, so I had to make some judgment calls. If a senior associate Justice hired a clerk, who was then assigned to an active member of the Court, I counted the hiring Justice. (Still, I found at least one law school bio that listed the active justice before the senior justice, a faux pas in my mind.) Likewise, for the clerks hired during the final terms of Justice Scalia or Ginsburg's tenure, and who were then reassigned, I counted them as Scalia and Ginsburg clerks. What about the clerks who were hired by Scalia or Ginsburg for a future term after their passing? In that case, I chose the active Justice that made the decision to re-hire them. With all those caveats out of the way, here is the list.

© Reason.com