The U.S. Supreme Court went back to the courtroom this week.  A new term means the justices have new clerks.  And that typically starts an examination of where the clerks came from, i.e., their alma maters and which judges they worked for previously.  For example, see this David Lat story on “feeder” law schools and judges for the last five terms.

How does the California Supreme Court stack up as a “feeder” court?  Not great.  According to what appears to be a comprehensive list of U.S. Supreme Court clerks on Wikipedia (it’s on the internet, so it must be accurate, right?), there have been only 13 California Supreme Court clerks who have graduated to the U.S. high court.  Ever.  Compare that with three individual judges (shown in a table in the Lat piece) who have each sent 13 of their law clerks upward in just the last five terms.

Of course, one big reason for the relatively small number of California Supreme Court alums at the high court is that the state justices for the most part hire more career staff attorneys than annual term clerks.

In any event, here — from the Wikipedia list — are the California justices who have “fed” law clerks to 1 First Street, NE (note — some of the clerks worked for other judges between their stints at the California and U.S. high courts):

Roger Traynor — 3 clerks:  John Mansfield to Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1957, Steven Umin to Justice Potter Stewart in 1965, and Phillip Johnson to Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1966.

Goodwin Liu — 3 clerks:  Lauren Pardee (Ruben) to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2014 (Justice Liu himself clerked for Justice Ginsburg, in 2000 (see here and here)), James Sigel to Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2014, and Whitney Brown to Justice Sotomayor this term.

Raymond Peters — 2 clerks: William Reppy, Jr. to Justice William O. Douglas in 1967 and Janet Meik (Wright) to Justice Douglas in 1972.

Phil Gibson — 1 clerk:  George Treister to Justice Hugo Black in 1950.

Stanley Mosk — 1 clerk:  James Asperger to Justice William Rehnquist in 1979.

Mathew Tobriner — 1 clerk:  Laurence Tribe to Justice Potter Stewart in 1967.

Edward Panelli — 1 clerk:  Mark Epstein to Justice William Brennan in 1987.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar — 1 clerk:  Nicholas Rosellini to Justice Stephen Breyer in 2019.

Related:

“SCOCA Chambers Staff: Annual Clerks or Staff Attorneys – or Both?”

Article sizes up Justice Liu’s experiment with term law clerks