Changing Value of Experience & Credentials When Appearing before SCOTUS

• In Event: SCOTUS & Lifetime Achievement Mini-Conference: Attorneys, Petitioners, & Public

Abstract

The confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020 heralded a fundamental change to the U.S. Supreme Court as an institution, creating a six-justice conservative majority that (implicitly) promised to overturn liberal precedents that dated back to the Warren Court. Seeing the change, attorneys who have waited decades for this opportunity began appealing to the Court, and a raft of inexperienced attorneys are now presenting some of the most important cases each term. Given the long-standing belief that experience begets wins at the Supreme Court, we wondered: when the Court turns so firmly in one direction, does experience still matter? Do other markers of pedigree, like clerkships and time in the Office of the Solicitor General, send stronger signals of qualifications and bona fides? Have rule changes further altered the importance of experience before the Court? Using data on the attorneys who argued before the Supreme Court between the 1984 to 2022 terms, we use this paper to investigate these questions.

Authors

• Alison Higgins Merrill, Susquehanna University

• Jessica Schoenherr, University of South Carolina