Supreme court justices select their clerks on ideological grounds

chilton clerks

Or so it appears. The CFscore on the y-axis measures the clerk’s ideology (based on donations to political campaigns) from liberal (-2) to conservative (+2). Scalia is just an example but the trend is notable; the other justices are equally bad (or good, depending on your point of view). And it turns out that lower courts follow the pattern though not quite as strongly. From a new paper by Bonica, Chilton, Goldin, Rozema, & Sen.