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New Clerk for Alito Has a Long Paper Trail (ADAM LIPTAK, 2/19/06, NY Times)

JUSTICE SAMUEL A. ALITO JR., who was so bland and self-effacing at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings last month, made a bold decision on arriving at the court. He hired Adam G. Ciongoli, a former top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft and an architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to be one of his law clerks. [...]

"We don't normally contemplate a high-level Justice Department official becoming a Supreme Court clerk," said Ronald D. Rotunda, a specialist in legal ethics at George Mason University School of Law. "It's just asking for problems that are unnecessary." Most Supreme Court law clerks, who prepare memorandums and draft decisions for the justices, have little of note on their résumés beyond superior grades at a top law school and a clerkship with a federal appeals court judge.

"They're like legal Doogie Howsers — child prodigies of the law," said David Lat, a former federal prosecutor whose blog "Underneath Their Robes" reports on the hiring of Supreme Court clerks. "Yet they're influencing decisions that affect millions."

Mr. Ciongoli, 37, represents a different model. He has a rich and public history in government and, most recently, as a senior lawyer at Time Warner.

"It really indicates a lapse in judgment," Deborah L. Rhode, who teaches legal ethics at Stanford, said of Justice Alito's decision. "I just don't think it helps your reputation for nonpartisanship, particularly after such partisan confirmation hearings, to start out by hiring someone who is perceived to have an ideological agenda."

It's a lifetime appointment, what does reputation matter?

This does though open up a whole range of possibilities for justices to hire the very best in the profession to clerk for them, rather than inexperienced twerps.

MORE:
Parsing Alito's Clerk Picks (Tony Mauro, 02-21-2006, Legal Times)

Two of Justice Samuel Alito Jr.'s former law clerks stopped in at his chambers earlier this month to congratulate him on winning confirmation.

Alito was so happy to see them, apparently, that he offered them jobs on the spot. He asked Hannah Smith, a Williams & Connolly associate, and Jay Jorgensen, a partner at Sidley Austin, to serve as his law clerks this term. Both, after clerking for Alito, had subsequent high court experience -- Jorgensen clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Smith for Justice Clarence Thomas -- and that was exactly what Alito needed.

Alito's other, more headline-making law clerk hire, Adam Ciongoli, does not have Supreme Court experience. But he is a trusted, high-energy former Alito clerk who could help Alito make his way through official Washington. Out of the blue, Ciongoli got the call, and he too returned to the marble palace on short notice, abandoning a high-flying, to-die-for job as vice president and general counsel of Time Warner Europe.

And there's just a slight pay cut. Ciongoli will earn $63,335 as a law clerk.

The Ciongoli pick was quickly portrayed as an early signal of Alito's conservative stripes, given that before he went to Time Warner, Ciongoli was counselor to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and one of the architects of the Bush administration's post-9/11 anti-terror legal strategy.

But Alito's embrace of Ciongoli, even to some liberal Court watchers, may have a less partisan significance. It could mean that Alito, like most other freshman justices, suddenly saw the enormity of his job and realized he needed help -- big time.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 19, 2006 6:02 PM