Notre Dame law school now ranks fourth, behind the University of Chicago, Yale and Stanford, for clerkships at all levels of the federal judiciary, according to American Bar Association statistics for 2023. Between 2017 and 2021, the school was tied for fifth in the nation for Supreme Court clerkships, according to the most recent analysis by University of Chicago Law Professor Brian Leiter. Also, during a single month in 2021, three justices were on campus. Justice Amy Coney Barrett taught a one-week seminar on statutory interpretation. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. each gave lectures. The court’s conservative justices are increasingly hiring the law school’s graduates and faculty to work in their chambers, the Washington Post reports.
Two recent graduates are among the four clerks working this term with Barrett, a Notre Dame graduate and longtime law professor. A third graduate is slated to clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. next year. Also, two of the school’s professors — legal historian Christian Burset and Patrick Reidy, who is also a Catholic priest — are clerking for Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh this term. The justices, meanwhile, are flocking to Notre Dame. This fall, Barrett and Kavanaugh led one-week courses at Notre Dame that delved into some of the court’s biggest recent decisions — on gun regulation, abortion and affirmative action in college admissions. Their growing ties in part reflect shared legal views between the conservative justices and the Catholic law school, whose religious liberty clinic — started by Dean Marcus Cole to defend religious freedoms — often files briefs in cases before the court. But as the Post reports, “the nexus between South Bend and the Supreme Court also represents frustration among conservatives with liberal elite law schools that have been criticized as inhospitable to their views.” The close ties began with longtime Notre Dame professor William Kelley, who clerked for the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia and later became deputy counsel to President George W. Bush, helped open doors for Barrett to land her own clerkship after law school. Kelley was later influential in recruiting Barrett to return to Notre Dame as an academic.
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