“By and large, I’m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the brightest, O.K.?” —Justice Antonin Scalia, explaining to students at American University Washington College of Law, which was ranked No. 48 this year, why roughly half the law clerks who served since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court have come from Harvard or Yale. Justice Thomas, who looked outside the Ivy League, said bloggers “referred to my clerks last year as TTT — third-tier trash.”
