Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe pool has been criticized for giving too much power to law clerks and for contributing to the court’s shrinking docket. For almost two decades until 2008, only Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010, stayed out of the pool. “The risk-averse thing to do is to recommend not to take a case.”Advertisement Continue reading the main storySome scholars have traced the decline of the Supreme Court docket to the pool. The justices each hire four law clerks, who are recent law school graduates with uniformly stellar credentials. Advertisement Continue reading the main story“The law clerks are highly intelligent, very able, uncommonly diligent,” she told Docket Sheet, a newsletter published for Supreme Court employees, in 1993.

Source: New York Times May 01, 2017 20:42 UTC