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Scott Harris ’88: clerk Supreme

Twenty years out of law school, Scott Harris has landed a job as US Supreme Court clerk. The Supreme Court clerk.

The Clerk of the Court “is a permanent officer of the institution who manages its docket and deals with lawyers filing and arguing cases,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, adding that, like the solicitor general and the marshal, the clerk wears a long-tailed morning coat to court.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced Harris’s appointment on July 1, effective September 1. Coming off 11 years as the court’s legal counsel—a “low-profile but important position,” according to Legal Times—Harris “brings pertinent experience and proven judgment to his new position,” Roberts says.

Described as affable and low-key, Harris earned his bachelor’s from Yale, his law degree from the University of Virginia, and his legal chops in private practice and as a federal prosecutor before joining the Supreme Court. He will succeed the retiring William Suter, who “is — and will forever be — the only clerk of the court in history who has a picture in his office of himself and Elvis Presley in 1958,” the Washington Post asserts.

But Harris has his own claim on history: his grandfather, Bucky Harris, was a Baseball Hall of Famer who led the Washington Senators to a World Series championship in 1924.

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