Academic Round-Up

The DePaul Law Review just published the results of an empirical study about the influence of Supreme Court clerks conducted by Todd Peppers and Chris Zorn, see here.  The results of this paper were extensively discussed in a recent article by the New York Times Supreme Court reporter, Adam Liptak, see here.  You may recall that Todd Peppers, a political scientist at Roanoke College, previously published an excellent book about the history of Supreme Court clerks entitled “Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk,” see here, which I reviewed in the course of releasing my own results of a study of the influence of law clerks on the certiorari process, see here.  The bottom line of the Peppers and Zorn paper is that the ideology of law clerks exert an additional influence on the Justices’ decisions on the merits beyond the selection effects created by Justices selecting like-minded law clerks.  The Peppers and Zorn paper is well worth a read.

This month’s issue of the Virginia Law Review contains an article by Amanda Frost entitled “Overvaluing Uniformity,” which analyzes the question of whether federal courts overvalue uniformity, see here.  Of particular interest to SCOTUSblog readers, Professor Frost spends quite a bit of time on pages 1631-1639 of the article analyzing the Supreme Court’s substantial emphasis on uniformity in setting its agenda through the certiorari process.  On an even more fundamental level, Frost dedicates considerable attention to the theoretical justifications for emphasizing uniformity, ultimately concluding that the uniformity rationale is not nearly as compelling as some of the other reasons underlying federal court review, such as ensuring the supremacy of federal law and the availability of a neutral forum for litigants.