Justice Jackson: a law clerk's recollections.

• Author: Neal, Phil C.
• Position: Testimonial

I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this event celebrating the life and work of Justice Jackson. Among other things, it gives me a chance to acknowledge publicly my own debt for one of the great experiences of my life. I especially want to commend the editors of the Albany Law Review for taking the initiative to do this.

Albany Law School may very well take pride in the fact that Robert Jackson's legal career began here--or almost began here. He had, in fact, begun his legal career a year before, when he clerked part-time in the Jamestown law office of his cousin, Frank Mott. He did that, incidentally, at the same time that he was taking what amounted to a postgraduate year at Jamestown High School. It was in that year that he came under the influence of Ms. Mary Willard, an English teacher who must have been a wonderful teacher and who plainly was one of the most important influences in Robert Jackson's life.

He spent only one year here at Albany Law School, but managed to complete the two-year requirements in that time, and followed that year with another year of law office apprenticeship. How much credit Albany Law School can claim for Robert Jackson's accomplishments in the law would be somewhat hard to say, but what we can say with assurance is that it did nothing to suppress his native abilities, and I believe that is no small claim.

I first met Justice Jackson in the winter of 1943. I was still in law school and I received a letter from him inviting me to come to Washington to discuss the possibility of a clerkship. The process of selecting Supreme Court law clerks was much less elaborate in those days. Most of the Justices used some law school professor to make suggestions or relied on a particular court of appeals judge to help them select a clerk. Today, Supreme Court law clerks almost invariably come from the ranks of court of appeals clerks and the selection process has become very competitive. I am told that applicants nowadays may spend weeks preparing for an interview with a member of the Court, much like preparing for a bar exam. Happily for me, I never went through such a process. A classmate and good friend of mine was William Jackson, the Justice's son. Justice Jackson had discussed the matter with Bill. So, I went down and had a very enjoyable conversation with the Justice and, of course, accepted his offer on the spot.

Many years later, I had the opportunity to introduce Justice Jackson to an outstanding student of mine at Stanford Law School who I thought well qualified to be his clerk. I do not think the Justice hesitated very long that time either in deciding to take the student as one of his clerks for the next Term (by that time, there were two law clerks per Justice). The student, by the way, was William Rehnquist.

My impression is that Justice Jackson never agonized much over selecting a law clerk. As with so much else in his life, he acted with a sure sense of his own judgment and willingness to risk being wrong. It was also one manifestation of the self-reliance that was one of his strongest traits. Framed on his mantelpiece was a rendering of [Rudyard] Kipling's line: "He travels the fastest who travels alone." (1) The truth is that Justice Jackson did not really need a law clerk. Unlike most other Justices I have known or heard about, Jackson did not use law clerks to write drafts of opinions. He made some revisions in his drafts in response to a law clerk's comments, but nearly every word of his opinions came from his own pen. I do not think there are many Justices about whom the same may be said. The one exception was that once or twice during a clerkship, the Justice would assign the writing of an opinion to the law clerk. I think his purpose was mainly to give the clerk the experience, and to enhance the law clerk's sense of participation in the enterprise. I must say, the Justice was as deferential to the law clerk's composition as the law clerk was to his. In drafts I composed, I recall only his addition of two or three phrases, inserted to give the draft his distinctive imprint.

There were other ways in which he made his law clerk feel more like a junior partner than an employee or minion. If one were visiting in some other clerk's office there would often be the interruption of a buzzer, which meant "Come here ... right now." If there was a buzzer in my office I never knew it. Justice Jackson's invariable habit was to walk from his office through his secretary's adjoining office--which was a big office--and come to my door to say: "Got a minute?" That...