Guides: How to Research Judicial Clerkships: Books and Guides on Clerkships

Inside Information About Being a Judicial Clerk

Want to know what you're getting yourself into? Hoping to avoid ethical errors and workplace faux pas? Check out these guides to clerking, written by those who have been there before.

Behind the Bench (3d) by Debra Strauss
Call Number: Electronic (West Study Aids)
Publication Date: 2023
The All-Inclusive Guide to Judicial Clerking by Abigail Perdue
Call Number: Electronic (West Study Aids)
Publication Date: 2017

Maintaining the Public Trust: Ethics for Federal Judicial Law Clerks, 2019 Revised Fourth Edition
This pamphlet provides an overview of law clerks’ ethical obligations as well as resources they can consult for further information. It covers topics such as confidentiality, conflicts of interest, political activities, online activities, and gifts, and includes examples that illustrate challenges law clerks may face. It also has an Ethics Checklist for Federal Judicial Law Clerks, which helps law clerks identify ethics problems that may arise.

The fourth edition includes the new provisions in the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees effective August 1, 2013. The revised fourth edition also includes clarifying language regarding workplace harassment and misconduct.

Downloaded from the website of the Federal Judicial Center.

Non-Fiction Works on Judicial Clerks

Of Courtiers and Princes: Stories of Lower Court Clerks and Their Judges by Todd C. Peppers, et al.
Call Number: Smith KF8806.5 .O318 2020x and Electronic
Publication Date: 2020
In his earlier books, In Chambers and Of Courtiers and Kings, Todd C. Peppers provided an insider's view of the Supreme Court from the perspective of the clerks who worked closely with some of its most important justices. With Of Courtiers and Princes, he concludes the trilogy by examining the understudied yet equally fascinating role of lower court clerks--encompassing pioneering women and minorities. Drawing on contributions from former law clerks and judicial scholars--including an essay by Ruth Bader Ginsburg--the book provides an inside look at the professional and personal bonds that form between lower court judges and their clerks. While the individual essays often focus on a single judge and his or her corps of law clerks, including their selection process, contributions, and even influence, the book as a whole provides a macro-level view of the law clerk's role in the rapidly changing world of lower federal and state courts, thereby offering an unusual yet crucial perspective on the inner workings of our judicial system.
Courtiers of the Marble Palace by Todd C. Peppers
Call Number: Smith KF8742 .P44 2006x
Publication Date: 2006
Courtiers of the Marble Palace is the first systematic examination of the "clerkship institution"--the web of formal and informal norms and rules surrounding the hiring and utilization of law clerks by the individual justices on the United States Supreme Court. Todd Peppers provides an unprecedented view into the work lives of and day-to-day relationships between justices and their clerks; relationships that in some cases have extended to daily breakfasts, games of competitive basketball and tennis, and occasional holiday celebrations. Through personal interviews with fifty-three former clerks and correspondence with an additional ninety, as well as personal interviews with a number of non-clerks, including Justice Antonin Scalia, Peppers has amassed a body of information that reveals the true inner-workings of the clerkship institution.
Sorcerers' Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court by Artemus Ward; David L. Weiden
Call Number: Smith KF8771 .W27 2006 and Electronic
Publication Date: 2006
Law clerks have been a permanent fixture in the halls of the United States Supreme Court from its founding, but the relationship between clerks and their justices has generally been cloaked in secrecy. While the role of the justice is both public and formal, particularly in terms of the decisions a justice makes and the power that he or she can wield in the American political system, the clerk has historically operated behind closed doors. Do clerks make actual decisions that they impart to justices, or are they only research assistants that carry out the instructions of the decision makers--the justices? Based on Supreme Court archives, the personal papers of justices and other figures at the Supreme Court, and interviews and written surveys with 150 former clerks, Sorcerers' Apprentices is a rare behind-the-scenes look at the life of a law clerk, and how it has evolved since its nineteenth-century beginnings.

Fiction Works on Judicial Clerking

Judicial clerkships are part of a grand history of the American legal profession. Get into the spirit of clerkship with these fiction works, available for checkout in the Library. The Avern Cohn Fiction Collection is located in the Core of Sub-2, behind the Circulation Desk.

Allegiance: A Novel by Kermit Roosevelt
Call Number: Avern Cohn Fiction Coll PS3618.O68 A75 2015
Publication Date: 2015
When the news broke about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Caswell "Cash" Harrison was all set to drop out of law school and join the army... until he flunked the physical. Instead, he's given the opportunity to serve as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. He and another clerk stumble onto a potentially huge conspiracy aimed at guiding the court's interests, and the cases dealing with the constitutionality of the prison camps created to detain Japanese-Americans seem to play a key part.
Supreme Ambitions: A Novel by David Lat
Call Number: Avern Cohn Fiction Coll PS3612.A8684 S87 2015
Publication Date: 2015
Supreme Ambitions details the rise of Audrey Coyne, a recent Yale Law School graduate who dreams of clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court someday. Audrey moves to California to clerk for Judge Christina Wong Stinson, a highly regarded appeals-court judge who is Audrey's ticket to a Supreme Court clerkship. While working for the powerful and driven Judge Stinson, Audrey discovers that high ambitions come with a high price.
The Tenth Justice: A Novel by Brad Meltzer
Call Number: Avern Cohn Fiction Coll PS3563.E4496 T46 1997
Publication Date: 1997
Ben, a clerk for a Supreme Court justice, is being blackmailed & he thinks one of his friends is supplying information to the blackmailer in this thriller that also supplies lots of information about the Supreme Court.

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How to Research Judicial Clerkships: Books and Guides on Clerkships

Inside Information About Being a Judicial Clerk

Non-Fiction Works on Judicial Clerks

Fiction Works on Judicial Clerking

Related Topic in the Catalog

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