Supreme Assignment

Written by Doug Goodnough

The Hillsdale College alumni pipeline to the Supreme Court continues.

During the past two decades, the College has had six graduates serve as clerks to the nation’s highest court. Add three more to that total, as Elliot Gaiser, ’12, Garrett West, ’15, and Manuel Valle, ’11, recently completed their terms in Washington, D.C.  Gaiser and West clerked for Associate Justice Samuel Alito, while Valle clerked for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Gaiser and West were back on the Hillsdale campus to start the academic year, teaching a course titled “Constitutional Interpretation” and also speaking at a Federalist Society event on August 25. They said it was an honor to serve as law clerks; even more special was the opportunity to share the experience.

“Getting hired by any Supreme Court Justice is a long shot,” West said. “Getting hired by Justice Alito in particular, the greatest Justice on the Court, is also a long shot. And getting hired to work with someone you went to college with is an even longer one.”

Each Justice hires four clerks out of a nationwide pool of thousands of qualified and experienced lawyers. Clerks assist the Justices with their cases, splitting up the workload.

“We would work primarily on the quarter of the cases assigned to us, but there was a lot of interaction regarding each other’s cases,” West said of the day-to-day duties.

“(West) is a really good editor,” Gaiser said of his colleague, “so I wanted him to flyspeck stuff that I was drafting before the Justice would read it. And I tried my best to reciprocate.”

Both had clerked for two judges before applying for the Supreme Court. And although they brought that experience, they had to adjust to their new workloads.

“I had heard that there was an enormous amount of work,” Gaiser said. “Seeing it in real life was kind of a moment. The Court resolves a small number of cases on its merits docket compared to the number of petitions it receives asking the Court for review. And those cases usually concern legal issues that have percolated for a while. The Court usually resolves a conflict between the lower courts or an issue of national importance.”

“I thought it was going to be essentially a very familiar role,” West said. “But the petition work really makes it a time crunch.”

Because the Supreme Court often has the “last word” for many cases and issues, Gaiser said there is an incredible amount of oversight and due diligence to make sure all is in order before a final ruling is made.

“There’s an old line that the Supreme Court is not final because it is infallible, it’s infallible because it’s final. There was a weightiness to what we do because you do not want to introduce any error,” he said.

Clerks witnessed cases argued before the Court during their term. During this term, there were several historic cases brought before the Court, including the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which addressed the constitutional right to an abortion. Justice Alito delivered the majority opinion that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion.

“It was really interesting to be at the Court when that (Dobbs case) and many other historic cases were decided,” Gaiser said. “It was inspiring to see great, genuine, hard legal questions worked through by the nine jurists who sit on the Court. It’s one of the best things about being a law clerk—that you get to experience the work of the Court. It’s important and meaningful work that affects the whole of the country.”

West spoke highly of Justice Alito. “He’s a very kind man, and he’s a brilliant jurist,” he said. “It was great to see his mind work on difficult cases.”

“His ability to cut through extraneous material and get to the heart of a case is truly on display whenever he is on the bench asking questions of the advocates,” Gaiser said of Justice Alito. “One of the privileges of being a law clerk is you get to sit in his office before he engages the best lawyers in the world and get to try your hand at answering those questions.”

Gaiser, a University of Chicago Law School graduate, and West, who earned his law degree at Yale, both credited Hillsdale College for lighting the path to their Supreme Court opportunity.

West said former Supreme Court clerks Paul Ray, ’08, and Megan Lacy Owen, ’07, encouraged him to attend law school when West took a class they offered at Hillsdale while he was an undergraduate. Gaiser spoke with Ray, and was further encouraged by Ryan Walsh, ’09, and David Morell, ’07, who also clerked for the Court.

“It was great to walk in their footsteps, the giants of other Hillsdale alumni who had gone before,” Gaiser said.

They said the “weightiness” of their assignment had a positive impact on their careers.

“I think that experience does help improve one’s legal abilities because working under pressure is very different from work on low-stakes issues,” West said.

“I became a better writer and a better legal thinker in each of the clerkships I’ve had,” Gaiser said. “And especially (under) Justice Alito. Being able to go back and forth in an iterative process on your writing with someone who is truly good at what he does—I will remember those lessons again and again throughout my career as a lawyer.”

Both are returning to private practice. Gaiser will join the appellate group at the Jones Day law firm in Columbus, Ohio, while West will also concentrate on appellate law at Paul, Weiss—a law firm in D.C.

“It is a marker of excellence and a credential that we will carry with us with humility for the rest of our lives,” Gaiser said of the Supreme Court experience.


Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s new director of Alumni Marketing. He’s looking forward to connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.

 

 


Published in August 2022