Meet Justice Kavanaugh's four female law clerks, a hiring first
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Justice Brett Kavanaugh joins the Supreme Court on Tuesday with a staff of four female law clerks.
It’s the first time any justice on the court has hired a clerking staff consisting only of women, report the New York Times, the Washington Post, Above the Law and the National Law Journal.
One clerk—Kim Jackson—previously worked for Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Jackson is a 2017 graduate of Yale Law School. She previously clerked for U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, who once dated Kavanaugh and told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was never abusive and had always treated her with respect, according to prior coverage by the National Law Journal.
The other law clerks worked for other federal appeals court judges appointed by Republican presidents. One of those three, Megan Lacy, also worked for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa and most recently worked on the White House team handling Kavanaugh’s confirmation. She is a 2010 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law.
The other two clerks are Shannon Grammel and Sara Nommensen. Nommensen, a 2016 Harvard Law School graduate, was one of Kavanaugh’s students. Grammel, a 2017 graduate of Stanford Law School, worked with Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher at the school’s Supreme Court litigation clinic.
Besides Jackson, five other clerks at the Supreme Court this term once worked for Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh and the other justices are hearing cases today on provisions of the Armed Career Criminal Act, report SCOTUSblog and the New York Times. The Times descrives the law as “a kind of three-strikes statute” that increases penalties in federal gun possession cases for those who have earlier convictions for three violent felonies or serious drug charges.
The issue in Stokeling v. United States is whether snatching a necklace is a violent felony. The issue in two other combined cases—United States v. Stitt and United States v. Sims—concerns what type of burglary qualifies as a violent felony. The defendants were convicted under state laws that allow burglary prosecutions for breaking into mobile homes and other vehicles where people sleep.
