The Counter-Clerks of Justice Scalia
“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.”
IN OCTOBER TERM 2012, I was a law clerk for Justice Scalia. When that fact comes up in conversation (say, at a social gathering), the reaction is almost always the same: “Cool!” people say, which is about my view on it, too. And then (I know it’s coming, and nowadays I just wait a beat for it): “Wait . . .You’re not, um . . . Are you a Republican?” To get a sense of the tone—relative certainty touched with a hint of concern—imagine asking a person seated next to you at dinner, “You don’t have pink eye. . . Do you?”
“No,” I say, trying not to sound as defensive as I feel. “I’m not.” And it’s true. I am no kind of Republican. In college, I made my first political donation to Howard Dean (ten bucks), and I’ve never looked back. So no—I’m not a Republican. (The experience of being interrogated about this fact so many times, however, has given me a genuine sympathy for the so-called “shy Tory” problem, whereby conservatives are nervous to admit what they think in social settings lest they face the opprobrium of their peers.)
