Professor Mary Hoopes Cited in United States Supreme Court Dissent in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

Professor Mary S. Hoopes's forthcoming Harvard Law Review article, "Law Clerk Selection and Diversity: Insights From Fifty Sitting Judges of the Federal Courts of Appeal," (SSRN) is cited in the United States Supreme Court dissenting opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The dissent, authored by Justice Sotomayor, was joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. The dissent relies on the article in asserting that racial inequality in the pipeline to the federal courts will deepen as the result of the majority's opinion. 

Excerpt from Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, J. Sotomayor dissenting:

The Court ignores the dangerous consequences of an America where its leadership does not reflect the diversity of the People. A system of government that visibly lacks a path to leadership open to every race cannot withstand scrutiny “in the eyes of the citizenry.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 332. “[G]ross disparity in representation” leads the public to wonder whether they can ever belong in our Nation’s institutions, including this one, and whether those institutions work for them. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–707, p. 171 (“The Court is going to hear from 27 advocates in this sitting of the oral argument calendar, and two are women, even though women today are 50 percent or more of law school graduates. And I think it would be reasonable for a woman to look at that and wonder, is that a path that’s open to me, to be a Supreme Court advocate?” (remarks of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar)).42

42Racial inequality in the pipeline to this institution, too, will deepen. See J. Fogel, M. Hoopes, & G. Liu, Law Clerk Selection and Diversity: Insights From Fifty Sitting Judges of the Federal Courts of Appeals 7–8 (2022) (noting that from 2005 to 2017, 85% of Supreme Court law clerks were white, 9% were Asian American, 4% were Black, and 1.5% were Latino, and about half of all clerks during that period graduated from two law schools: Harvard and Yale) ...

The complete opinion may be found at US Supreme Court