I’m curious what readers think about the relative merits of state court clerkships versus federal court clerkships, particularly with regard to careers in academia. How, for example, does a federal district court clerkship compare against a state supreme court clerkship?
(I realize that there are other factors that may weigh in, such as whether one is interested in practicing law in the state of the state supreme court; whether one is interested in trial level litigation as opposed to appellate litigation; whether one likes one judge better than the other; and so on. But let’s put those aside, and focus just on the question of which is more prestigious for the purposes of the Faculty Appointments Register form.)
I can see how someone who wants to teach, say, first year criminal law might be drawn to a state supreme court over a district court. And perhaps the same would be true for someone with teaching interests in contracts, property, or torts — though I seem to recall lots of contracts cases from my clerkships, thanks to 28 USC s 1332 (diversity of citizenship).
But absent any teaching subject matter draws, does the federal district court necessarily carry more weight? Should it?
Posted by Tung Yin on September 28, 2006 at 12:43 PM
Comments
I did a clerkship for both a state supreme court and a federal circuit court. Both were great experiences, but state supremes rock! Obviously, my experience aside, this is very-judge dependent.
Mike is right that the presumption (as far as what is more prestigious) is in favor of the feds though. I’m not sure why that is, and I don’t think it’s because of the subject matter or how many cases you get. I think it has to do with the number of applicants for the job. More people see the feds as more prestigious, therefore more applicants, therefore harder to get, even though the differences between what you’re actually doing and the connections you may be making are small.
Posted by: Miriam Cherry | Sep 29, 2006 6:13:07 PM
I clerked on a state supreme court, a federal court of appeals, and a federal district court. In my view, any difference between the general quality of a state supreme court clerkship and a federal district court clerkship is overwhelmed by the differences between different judges within each system. One may concede this, and still want the generality, for what is a hiring committee to do in comparing FAR forms between candidates who have clerked for various state and federal judges with whom the committee is unacquainted?
My sense, based only on my experience and familiarity with reputation, is that state courts typically decide far more cases, and as a result produce more opinions, but ones that are shorter, less exhaustive, and less theorized than opinions from federal courts. This places them in a disadvantage in the teaching market, for the writing that law professors do is more narrow and in-depth than the work of a state court clerk. On the other hand, the increased number of cases means that a state court clerk will be exposed to a wider variety of cases, which has significant advantages. In particular, a clerk involved in the cert. process will see hundreds of legal issues in the course of a clerkship, whereas a district court clerk will, I believe, encounter far fewer.
Again, though, I stress that a clerkship on a single court can be tremendously different depending on the judge for whom one is working, and that plenty of clerkships do not fit the pattern identified above. And as was said in the initial post, it probably makes sense to evaluate state vs. federal clerkship only with regard to the subjects the candidate wishes to teach.
Posted by: Mike Dimino | Sep 28, 2006 1:07:03 PM
It is impossible for lawyers to render an honest answer on this question, since few have experience in both state and federal clerkships (even fewer in both trial and appellate levels), and most information people have is based on stereotypes of both clerkships.
Posted by: S.cotus | Sep 28, 2006 12:52:53 PM