Over at The Legal Times, Tony Mauro has this interesting story on the growth of Supreme Court Litigation Clinics at a number of law schools. It will be interesting to see how many of these clinics can exist at the same time given the relatively small size of the Court’s docket.
More Supreme Court Litigation Clinics?
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I think there’s room for multiple litigation clinics. The Supreme Court docket may be small, but the docket has a very small effect on the number of briefs generated, because the bulk of Supreme Court litigation work are the thousands of unsuccessful cert petitions; and there is certainly no shortage of low-percentage cert petitions that can be added at the margin.
But why would you want to teach your students to write unsuccessful cert. petitions?
I agree with Ted, although one wonders how successful a clinic will be if its work product is mostly unsuccessful cert. petitions and amicus briefs.
The problem with these clinics–and I think it’s a substantial problem–is that they perpetuate the idea, at least in the most elite law schools, that constitutional law and constitutional litigation are only for the most academically sophisticated students–and that being a constitutional lawyer or constitutional scholar defines success. That’s nonsense–though of course professors of constitutional law have every reason to advocate otherwise. It’s actually a real shame that most top law students just assume as a matter of course that they should get on law review, do constitutional work, seek an appellate clerkship, try to work their way into the SG’s office or the OLC, and then land an impressive teaching position. Their lives–and the law–suffer for that lack of imagination.
[OK Comments: There are some interesting ides here, but I would tend to think that the lack of imagination is more the result of the perceived (and sometimes actual) hierarchy of the legal profession. This list is a list of very prestigious things, and students "assume as a matter of course that they should" do these things because they are unquestionably prestigious, more than because they see constititional litigation as being for the academically sophisticated. I would also point out that there is a big difference between constitutional litigation and supreme court litigation: most constitutional litigation is not in the Supreme Court, and most Supreme Court litigation is not constitutional.]
most constitutional litigation is not in the Supreme Court, and most Supreme Court litigation is not constitutional.
That’s a great point you make. Most constitutional law is done by criminal defense and Section 1983 lawyers. There aren’t a lot of constitutional issues that arise in commercial disputes.
Also, I got a chuckle at many of the cases worked up at the Stanford Supreme Court Clinic’s cases. Boring cases mostly… cases that involved technicalities dealing with, e.g., bankruptcy. So what if it’s before the Supreme Court? The forum does not an interesting issue make.
“Also, I got a chuckle at many of the cases worked up at the Stanford Supreme Court Clinic’s cases. Boring cases mostly… cases that involved technicalities dealing with, e.g., bankruptcy. So what if it’s before the Supreme Court? The forum does not an interesting issue make.”
Believe it or not, some people find bankruptcy and other statutes interesting. Arguing about “substantive due process” is quite dull and lacks the intellectual rigor of analyzing a complex statute such as the Bankruptcy Code.
It’s no matter, I suppose– as mentioned above, despite popular belief, the Supreme Court does not sit around deciding conlaw cases all day (except with respect to crimlaw issues). The bulk of the Court’s work (and the bulk of the federal judiciary’s work, for that matter) involves interpreting statutes and administrative regulations.