Annie Ortega, a third-year student who recently took a weeklong class taught by Barrett, praised the “ideologically diverse” school. He is president of the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society, but said he has lively conversations with many liberal friends at school.
“It was really important to go to law school where I wanted to hear both sides of the conversation, and it was something that I found to be true in my classroom,” she said.
Joshua Mannery, a recent graduate who leans liberal and serves as president of the student bar association, said that while he doesn’t feel left out, “I don’t think anyone who says it’s more conservative is wrong.”
‘Cream of the crop’
Each of the nine Supreme Court justices hires four clerks a year. It is considered the most prestigious position a recent law graduate can obtain.
“These are considered the cream of the crop, the best of the legal profession,” said Aliza Shatzman, president of the Legal Accountability Project, which she created to help increase transparency in the clerical process amid concerns about workplace violence and harassment.
Throughout the year, the clerks handle some of the biggest cases before the court on issues like abortion, guns, voting rights and LGBTQ rights. After completing the clerkship, the legal profession is in high demand with large law firms offers eye-catching signing bonuses. Many officers go on to high-profile careers in corporate law, academia or, in some cases, politics. Later in their careers, they are often singled out as potential judge appointees. Six of the current nine justices clerked for the court, as did several prominent senators, including Republicans Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
For the next nine-month term, which officially begins Monday, two recent Notre Dame Law School graduates, Kari Lorentson and Elizabeth Totzke, are both Barrett’s clerks. The school’s two law professors, Christian Burset and Patrick Reidy, a Catholic priest, are judging Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, respectively.
They follow in the footsteps of four other Notre Dame graduates who have clerked for the conservative justice on the high court in the past five years. Two other Notre Dame professors have also served on the Supreme Court in recent years, with Gorsuch sometimes seen as favoring hiring academics to work for him.
In an appearance At Notre Dame last year, Kavanaugh talked about what he looks for in his secretaries.
“It has to be people who are comfortable with my overall approach,” Kavanaugh said. “I had two great Notre Dame law clerks. They just worked hard.”
Nicole Garnett, a longtime Notre Dame professor who clerked for conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and Barrett’s longtime friendchairs the school’s clerical committee. In the interview, he downplayed his ties to conservative justices.
“I think it’s probably a category mistake to draw any conclusions about the clerkship of the Supreme Court because it’s a needle in a haystack, a lightning rod,” he said.
In 2023, Notre Dame was ranked fourth in the country in placing students in clerkships at all levels of the judiciary. Notre Dame is ranked 20th overall US News & World Report ranking of law schools.
Traditionally elite law schools dominate the Supreme Court’s clerkships, with many justices hiring clerks from the same law schools they attended and maintaining close ties to faculty members. About two-thirds the secretaries come from five schools: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. A graduate of Notre Dame Law School, Barrett is the only member of the current court without a law degree from Harvard or Yale.
In this context, Notre Dame scraps with other law schools for the rest of the clerkships and has done well. In the past five years, more Notre Dame Law School graduates have clerked for the high court than many other top law schools, including Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Another conservative-aligned law school is George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School in Virginia, which has placed some graduates on Supreme Court clerkships.
While Supreme Court clerkships are the most sought after, similar roles with federal appeals court judges are also important, in part because many people who later obtain high court clerkships have previously clerked for a lower court judge.
Notre Dame is making progress on that front, too. About 20% of the most recent graduating class of 187 students went on to some type of clerkship.