The Counter-Clerks of Justice Scalia

Abstract

“So, what are you going to do when you’re done here?”

That’s what he asked me first. I had just sat down in his chambers, on a big, overstuffed leather couch. It was a day in early April, and I’d spent my last few minutes sitting across the street in a park, shuffling through the index cards I’d been using for weeks to prepare. The cards were organized by topic, each with a few bullet points to remind me of what the man across from me thought about every subject on which he’d had an opinion over the last quarter-century. From A (the Administrative Procedure Act) to Z (Zerbst, a doctrine about the voluntary waiver of constitutional rights), it was all there.

But this? He wants to know what I want to be when I grow up?

“Well,” I said to Justice Scalia. “I’m thinking about becoming a lawyer.”