Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has hired one of the architects of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's policies to serve as his law clerk at the Supreme Court for the rest of the current term, the court announced yesterday.I do find this troubling, but the fact that Ciongoli is a former clerk of Alito's takes some of the edge off it. It doesn't seem that Alito went looking for someone with an inside knowledge of important cases that he is likely to face. And there is a process in place for law clerks to recuse themselves: "According to a 2002 federal publication, 'Maintaining the Public Trust: Ethics for Federal Judicial Law Clerks,' clerks should not participate in cases that they worked on 'in a previous legal job,' or about which they have personal knowledge of disputed facts."
Adam G. Ciongoli, 37, a senior vice president at Time Warner Inc., served as counselor to Ashcroft from 2001 to 2003. He attended Georgetown University Law Center, clerked for Alito at the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit from 1995 to 1996, and helped prepare the justice for his recent confirmation hearings.
Ciongoli was an aide to Ashcroft during Ashcroft's years as a senator and then came to the Justice Department, where he advised Ashcroft on terrorism issues in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Among the issues he worked on were the detention of thousands of terrorism suspects in the United States and the use of military tribunals to try them.
As a law clerk for Alito, his responsibilities will include helping Alito draft opinions, prepare for oral argument and sift through the mountain of appeals that arrive each week.
Ciongoli's appointment, which will last about five months, is unusual: Though there has been a slight trend at the court toward hiring law clerks with a few years of work experience, the vast majority of clerks are recent law school graduates.
Among those who have come to the court after working elsewhere, none in recent memory had held a government position as senior as Ciongoli's at the Justice Department, where he was widely regarded as one of Ashcroft's closest confidants.
Perhaps it is a good thing for the Justices to hire more experienced persons as their clerks. Here Alito has tapped a person he trusted to help him with his confirmation hearings. Hiring Ciongoli seems so strange because we are used to the strangeness of thoroughly green clerks.
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I don't mind at all his hiring someone a bit long in the tooth.
I am curious though, it is clear and transparent to all when a judge recuses herself, is it clear and transparent to all when a law clerk recuses himself?
I think that, evaluated in terms of the prevailing circumstance, this is perfectly sensible. Alito is an experienced judge, but he is new to the Supreme Court, and it stands to reason that an experienced and steady hand whom Alito has worked with before would be an ideal Clerk while Alito gets his bearings on the Court.
If it was me, I would have looked to see if any of my Clerks had gone on to clerk at the Supreme Court and hired one of them, but perhaps that option was unavailable. Sensible call on Alito's part.
I think it is probably a smart move given the short term of the clerkship. Alito probably wants someone who can come in and actually work rather than come in and take a couple months to figure out his ideosyncracies and such.
I would note that I will be 37 in April and am envious of Mr. Ciongoli.
Okay, I'll admit it, I find this law clerk appointment troubling. Ciongoli has been too close to the action of some of the more controvertial issues of the last few years to have such a position, IMO. While the argument that Alito doesn't want to break in a new clerk for a short term probably has some merit, I have to ask: doesn't Alito have other former clerks that didn't work for the Bush DoJ that he could have tagged?
Note that the linked article says that Alito has taken on two of O'Connor's clerks, which was the logical thing to do.
Again Ann, will the people, defendants, and future scholars know when and if a law clerk has resolved himself? Are opinions or their drafts written or documented in a manner that indicates who participated in the process?
Reading the last para,
Ciongoli was one of five lawyers named as law clerks to Alito. Benjamin Horwich and Alexander Volokh will switch to Alito from the chambers of retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Hannah Smith and Jay Jorgensen will join Alito after having worked for Justice Clarence Thomas and then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, respectively.
I see a makeup of 5 experienced clerks, 4 coming inhouse from the SCOTUS group, without any encumbrances, and one prior Alito clerk coming in from the outside.
With 4 SCOTUS clerks, any of those cases with possible conflicts can be handled by them.
Ciongoli brings a good understanding of Alito. I would not be surprised if he fills the Chief of Staff or Aide deCamp role among the 5 clerks.
With the acclaim that Alito got from his previous clerks, it seems clear to me that he treats them well and that the junior ones thought that they were respected and listened to. I would expect that Alito will go into next year with a crop of outsider clerks.
Ann: Isn't it common practice for the Supremes to to obtain clerks with experience clerking elsewhere first, rather than new law school grads? If that is the case, I would predict that Alito reaches down to his old circuit for the next round of hires.
Nothing encourages and supports the terrorists more than endless discussion of the nuances of a meaningless living constitution!
Are we really to believe that thugs in madrassas and caves actually pay any attention whatsoever to the nuances of schools of thought on the U.S. Constitution?
I always cringe when I see a sentence begin with "nothing encourages the terrorists more than...".
Drill SGT: Most Supreme Court clerks are recent grads, but they are coming from a lower court clerkship. That's the normal path.
New Justices usually hire former clerks, as this very informative post explains. Another example is Chris Landau, who clerked for Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, Scalia on the Supreme Court, and then for Thomas again during Thomas's first year on the Court.
I'm not underestimating anything, David. I am quite sure that when a statement begins with "the terrorists take great comfort from X," X is a thing the speaker opposes politically. Thus, his opponents are comforting the terrorists. It's demogoguery, pure and simple.
Not so fast Elizebeth. Isn't is possible for both to be true: it is true that terrorists take great comfort in "X" and it is true that "X is something the speaker opposes politically.
Sure, Jack. There can be truth in any cliche. But isn't it wise to be circumspect? There's nothing ambiguous in the example we're looking at here. It's pure bull hockey.
So I take it Ann that you agree, that no one in the public knows when a law clerk has recused himself.
David,
What have the cartoons and free speech got to do with our internal disagreements over "a living constitution"? No one's arguing whether our rights clash with the tenent's of our enemies' beliefs; of course they do. But that's not what you were arguing earlier--you were trying to score points for your position on schools of constitutional interpretation with a low appeal to fear of terrorism. Changing the subject to what's wrong with Islamist fundamentalism versus Enlightenment thinking is a red herring.
Dave, the problem is that you can say any of our debates on policy, our constitution, how we should conduct this war, how we should treat captive combatants, and so forth are seen as weaknesses by the enemy. Therein is the demogoguery. It becomes a matter of "if you challenge the president" or "if you support the living constitution view, you are comforting the terrorists!" That's bunk.
We don't have to change our culture to make ourselves more comprehensible to people who have no actual interest in comprehending us. And I don't think that's your purpose. Your purpose is to use fear to gain compliance, here at home.
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