Brunson - CERTIORARI DENIED
SEE TOP COMMENT!
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010923zor_p860.pdf
Page 5
22-380 BRUNSON, RALAND J. V. ADAMS, ALMA S., ET AL.
What does the clerk do?
Something similar to what federal court clerks do. Primarily, their role is to sift through the thousands of petitions and mark the cases worthy of being granted time. “It's the most basic task, and the constant thing that you do – during the summer it's practically your only task.” The petitions that lawyers write very cleverly argue why their cases should be granted; the clerk's job is “to screen out those that are legitimate and write bench memos on what we think about the case.”
https://www.chambers-associate.com/where-to-start/getting-hired/scotus-clerkships
Exactly - and Brunson did not make it through this initial weed out process. It was disposed of at the earliest opportunity.
The clerk could have denied it even making it into the room with the Judges.
The law clerk of a Justice doesn’t have the power to deny anything - only the court can do that. What they do is sift through the cases and find cases that would likely interest the Justice, then the remains bulk gets summarily denied by the Court. So no opportunity for a law clerk to deny anything. It’s just not the way the process works.
I agree. The clerks, who know how their justices think, look at the hundreds of possible cases and select a few to go to conference. I does not make any sense for everything to be looked at the the justices it would take too long.
They don’t select a few to go to conference - EVERY property filed case goes to conference. What they do it highlight those cases with that they think their justices would be interested in - the rest are summarily thrown out after a conference.
So it’s more like unless the law clerk picks one for a justice to review, it’s going to get thrown out with the trash. No one picked the Brunson case.
Clerk is more powerful than the judge.