Former clerk discusses Supreme Court procedures

One of Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer's law clerks, Christina Burnett '90 GS '93, provided an inside look into the workings of the court in a discussion titled "The Court and Its Culture: A Conversation."

In the discussion — part of the History Department's "Modern America Workshop" seminar series — Burnett spoke about the qualifications that judicial nominees, such as Samuel Alito '72, would need for the high court.

"Probably confidence with legal material is the most important qualification" for judicial nominees to the Supreme Court, Burnett said. Due to the large amount of work, justices depend greatly on their clerks' ability to screen what comes in. But because justices simply can't read every paper that's filed, they run the risk of being "overly dependent on their clerks."

The Supreme Court receives at least 80,000 writs of certiorari — petitions to hear cases — each year. To handle the caseload, each law clerk is assigned to examine six or seven cases per week and present summaries to the judges on why a case should be heard in court or dismissed, Burnett said. If four out of the nine justices vote to hear a case, it becomes part of the high court's docket.

In her experience, Burnett said, there is a swift learning curve as a Supreme Court law clerk. But the stacks of papers weren't too daunting, she joked, because of the intense work ethic that she honed at the University.

"In some ways, I believe being a graduate student in history [at Princeton] prepared me better than Yale law school," she said.

What she found most surprising about the Supreme Court was that "I spent about a third of my time dealing with death," she said of her time reading execution appeals and handling capital cases. Burnett found it disturbing that this one issue monopolizes so much of the court's attention.

"If you're going to have a death penalty, you have to have rigorous and careful review, and I wonder whether it is a good thing for American courts to spend so much time dealing with death," she said.

The co-coordinators of the event, Jason Sharples and Chin Jou of the history department, said they were impressed by the turnout of more than 40. Most were University graduate students and faculty, though some undergraduates also attended.

Sharples said in an email that Burnett was invited to speak "to share in her uncommon insight into the inner workings of the Court, which by happy coincidence happens to be an institution of particular interest these days."