Guess what hasn't happened at the Supreme Court in the past 20 years? The plum positions as clerks, career-making jobs, have not gone to more women and to more people of color. USA Today columnist Tony Mauro revisits a study they first completed two decades ago to find out that essentially no progress has been made.
The research showed that those prestigious one-year clerkships, a golden ticket to a top-tier legal career, were going overwhelmingly to white males. Fewer than 2% were African-Americans, 1% were Hispanic, and only a quarter were women.
The stories, which occupied more space in USA TODAY than any other topic in a single day’s edition until then, caused a stir. Civil rights leaders protested and got arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court, and justices were routinely asked by members of Congress why they have not hired more minorities.
Of course that outrage resulted in basically nothing. Mauro, now Supreme Court correspondent for The National Law Journal and the Supreme Court Brief newsletter followed up with a new survey.
We found that since 2005, 85% of all Supreme Court law clerks have been white. The percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics has increased at a glacial pace. Women comprise a third of the clerks instead of a fourth, even though more than half of law students now are female.
And the lack of diversity runs across the spectrum of justices. Though half of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s clerks have been women, she has hired only one black law clerk since joining the court in 1993. Only 8% of Chief Justice Roberts' clerks have been racial or ethnic minorities. Also note: Harvard and Yale law schools have increased their dominance, providing half of the court's law clerks since 2005, compared to 40 percent in 1998.
This matters first of all because these are very powerful jobs. As Maura points out, they "help shape the court's docket and draft its decisions." The people who occupy the rarified environs of the court are critical to exposing the particularly cloistered justices to real life. Mauro highlights the fact that while they regularly rule on cases involving Native Americans, no justice has ever had a Native American clerk. That perspective has been missing.
Supreme Court clerks also rise to powerful political and judicial positions. They are the next generations of judges and members of Congress. They are and will be making policy decisions and ruling on cases that often have the most consequences for women and on communities of color. And often not in a good way.