Supreme Ambitions

“High status is thought by many (but freely admitted by few) to be one of the finest of earthly goods.”

—
Alain de Botton

“If nothing else, there's applause … like waves of love pouring over the footlights.”

—
All About Eve

“I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, OK.”

—
Madonna

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Acknowledgments

The walk from the law school to Yorkside was short. This was good; I wanted this to be a short conversation. As a dutiful daughter, I felt the need to update my mother on important developments, but I didn't want to get caught up in a long argument about my life and career choices.

“Hi Mom. What's up?”

“Nothing much. Waiting for your father to come home from a job so we can have dinner. And your sister is coming over from the Center. Almost done cooking—I made
sinigang
, one of your favorites. Too bad you're not here. How are you?”

“Oh, fine. I just wanted to let you know—I'm going to be in Los Angeles next week. For a clerkship interview with a judge.”

“You're flying out to L.A.? Next week? How much is your ticket?”

“Five hundred or so,” I said (rounding down, and excluding taxes and fees).

“Five hundred? That's a lot. Why aren't they paying? Like the law firms?”

“I had to buy on short notice. And this isn't a law firm. It's for a clerkship. With a federal judge. It's the government.”

My mother sighed, in Queens. I heard her, in New Haven.

“Audrey, I don't understand why you want to do this ‘clerky' thing. Your cousin Vincent works as a clerk.”

“At a Shoe Mart in the Philippines. This is completely different.”

“So you went to Harvard and Yale, and your dad and I borrowed all
this money, and you borrowed all this money, so you could get a job as a clerk? Like your cousin Vincent?”

“This is a
law clerk
position, with Judge Christina Wong Stinson. A federal judge. A federal
appeals court
judge. One level below the Supreme Court. And some say Judge Stinson herself might be nominated to the Supreme Court someday.”

“Audrey, it's up to you—your life, your career. I'm just a nursing assistant, I don't know anything about this law-law stuff of yours.”

“I've explained this before, Mom. A clerkship with a federal appellate judge is an amazing experience for a young lawyer, a chance to see litigation from the point of view of a judge. And it's very prestigious. Top law students from around the country would kill for a Ninth Circuit clerkship.”

Well, maybe not
any
Ninth Circuit clerkship; it would have to be with the right judge. The Ninth wasn't as uniformly prestigious as, say, the D.C. Circuit. But I wasn't about to try and explain this to my mother.

“So this job is prestigious,” she said. “Is prestige going to pay your rent? Or your student loans?”

Actually, it could. But I did not feel like explaining to my mother, a nurses' aide whose interaction with lawyers was mercifully limited, the complex process by which the legal profession generates, fetishizes, and monetizes prestige.

“I can live on a law clerk's salary,” I said. “I'd be making at least $60,000 a year …”

“Ay,
susmariosep
! Sixty thousand a year? Why don't you just go back to that Cravath place? You'd be making over $150,000, right? Now
that's
good money. Your father and I have never made that much in a year—combined.”

Now it was my turn to sigh. Maybe I would try and enlighten my mother. I had an idea about how to put a stop to her carping.

“Cravath pays $160,000,” I said, referring to Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where I had worked as a summer associate (and which I had an offer to return to after graduation). “But what if I could get about twice
that much—just as a signing bonus, on top of a six-figure salary?”

I could sense my mother's ears perking up. She was not a greedy woman and did not have extravagant tastes. But as an immigrant who had come to the United States with practically nothing, who had slowly scrimped and saved her way into the bottom rung of the middle class, she did not take money for granted. She had been dazzled by my job last summer at Cravath—a job that paid me more than $3,000 a week, while wining and dining me at Manhattan's best restaurants—and couldn't stop bragging about it to her friends.

“So … how does that signing bonus work?” she asked. “I thought you said this clerk thing pays about $60,000?”

“Yes, that's right,” I said. “But if I get this clerkship and impress Judge Stinson, she could recommend me for a clerkship with a Supreme Court justice. And Supreme Court clerks, when they leave the Court and go to law firms, get huge signing bonuses—as high as $300,000. On top of a base salary of about $200,000.”

My mother was momentarily silent—not her usual state.

“Well,” she said, “that sounds pretty good. That could pay off your student loans instantly. And help out with the costs of your sister's care. And maybe send your mom and dad on a cruise, ha! You should become a Supreme Court clerk.”

I laughed—loudly—and then immediately felt guilty. But that was my spontaneous reaction to my mother's comment. She might as well have said, “You should become an international luge champion.”

“Mom, these positions are almost impossible to get. Supreme Court clerks are the best and the brightest young lawyers in the country.”

“Audrey,” said my mother, in an almost lecturing tone, “you graduated magna from Harvard for college. Now you're at Yale for law school, and you're on law review. You worked over the summer at Cravath. How many are better and brighter than you? How many law students get profiled in the
Filipino Reporter
?”

I was touched by my mother's pride in me. And in the
Filipino Reporter
, the New York–area newspaper for the Filipino American community
(“Fair, Fearless, Factual”). But I had to dispel her illusions.

“There are hundreds of law students out there with résumés just like mine. There are 40,000 new law school graduates each year—and about 40 Supreme Court clerks. It is literally a one-in-a-thousand opportunity.”

“But you are one in a million—and so pretty, too!
Mestiza
beauty, as they say back home. Of course a supreme judge will want to hire you. Like that black one, the one who likes the dirty movies. Ha!”

My mother started to laugh at her own joke, an old habit of hers. I felt myself blushing. (Due to my Irish heritage on my father's side, I could pass as white and was quite capable of blushing.)

“Mom, I have to go. I'll talk to you later.”

“Okay,
hija
. Be a good girl!”

When I arrived at Yorkside, a casual pizza-and-diner-type eatery just down the street from the law school, Jeremy was already standing outside. He pretended to peruse the menu, even though he'd get the same thing he always got: a cheeseburger, with Swiss and lettuce and tomato, no bun. His near-pathological aversion to carbs helped him stay extremely thin. I was a size two, in good shape, but hanging out with Jeremy made me feel fat.

A waitress, neither surly nor friendly, seated us in a roomy booth near the back, then took our drink order. I was grateful for the relatively private table. We decided to meet at Yorkside precisely to avoid the law school cafeteria (and not just because of its hummus of dubious provenance). The Yale Law School dining hall in early September—the height of clerkship application season for third-year law students, pursuant to the Law Clerk Hiring Plan—was a hive of anxiety and competitiveness.

My friendship with Jeremy Silverstein dated back to our first year of law school, when we were in the same 1L class section. We frequently found ourselves on opposite sides of classroom debates: I was a moderate, which passed for conservative at the law school, while Jeremy was very liberal. But we bonded over a shared love of good Indian food and bad television. Now, as 3Ls, we served together as articles editors for the
Yale Law Journal
, spending many late nights arguing over which pieces to accept for publication.

The waitress brought us our Diet Cokes and took our food order: cheeseburger sans bun for Jeremy, a chicken Caesar salad (dressing on the side) for me. Jeremy and I engaged in small talk—classes, journal submissions, gossip about a potentially philandering professor—before tackling the topic we had come to Yorkside to talk about: which clerkship interviews we had scored. Due to our different political views, we were applying to different slates of judges, meaning that we weren't competing head-to-head for the same jobs. This allowed us to discuss clerkship applications without freaking each other out.

“So, Miss Audrey,” said Jeremy, squeezing lemon into his drink with a chemist's precision, “tell me which judges you're interviewing with.”

“Well, Mr. Silverstein, why don't you tell me about your interview schedule?”

“I asked you first,” he said—and he was correct. The playground rule has a legal counterpart: first in time, first in right.

I smiled flirtatiously. Jeremy was a little too skinny, but cute. I sometimes wondered what our relationship would be like if he weren't gay.

“Right now I have four interviews,” I said, in as matter-of-fact a way as possible. But I knew four was impressive—and so did Jeremy, whose eyes grew wide.

“Very nice,” he said. “I kind of hate you right now. So who are you seeing?”

“Let's see,” I said, pretending to search my memory, when actually he could have woken me up at three in the morning and I could have blurted out these names instantly. “Barbara McDaniel.”

“You applied to a
district
judge?”

“You're such a snob! District court clerkships are often better learning experiences than circuit court clerkships. And it's not just any district—it's the Southern District of New York, the best trial court bench in the country, with the best cases. Judge McDaniel handled Enron, World-Com …”

“Sure,” Jeremy said, “but district court is district court, and circuit court is circuit court. In district court, you'll spend all your time dealing with crap like motions practice and discovery disputes. Trust me—I interned for a district judge after 1L year. Wouldn't you rather be clerking for an appeals court, drafting opinions on big sexy issues of law?”

Jeremy was a good person and one of my best friends, but he could be a horrible snob. In his defense, he was a product of his environment. A clerkship with a district judge, a trial-level judge in the federal system, was enormously prestigious and hard to get. But some people at Yale, both professors and students, quietly looked down upon district-court clerkships. There were some exceptions to this rule—it was okay to go district if you really wanted to be a trial lawyer, if you clerked for the right judge on the right district, if you followed it up with an appeals-court clerkship—but it generally held true.

“All of my other interviews are circuit,” I said. “Michael DeConcini, Third Circuit. Steven Collins, Eighth Circuit.”

“Ugh … Isn't Collins in, like, Iowa?”

“It's only a year,” I said. “I could live anywhere for a year. I'm more focused on judges than geography. Collins has a great reputation. He graduated from here, clerked for the Supreme Court, served as U.S. Attorney. I could learn so much from him. And he could become a big feeder judge in a few years. In fact, he's already fed a few of his clerks into Supreme Court clerkships.”

“I could not live in Iowa for a year,” Jeremy said. “Geography aside, Collins is too conservative for me. Who's your last interview?”

“Judge Stinson, Christina Wong Stinson. Former district judge in Los Angeles, now on the Ninth Circuit?”

“Hello! You don't need to say that as a question! Stinson is
major
. Possible SCOTUS nominee in a Republican administration. She'd be the first Asian American on the Court. Feeder judge to the Dark Side—um, I mean, the conservative justices. Is she your first choice?”

“I feel very lucky to have these interviews, and each judge has his or her own strengths …”

Jeremy gave me a withering look.

“Okay,” I said, “Stinson is my top choice.”

I didn't want to admit how badly I wanted to clerk for Judge Stinson. Articulating a desire and pursuing it avidly makes it so much worse when you fail. I thought of the William James quotation: “With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure, no humiliation.” But there was no sense in hiding such things from Jeremy.

“So,” he asked, “I assume you've scheduled her first? So you can bag on the others if she makes you an offer?”

“Yup.”

“Well, feeder judges move fast, and Stinson is a feeder. Nicely done, girl.”

Jeremy raised his Diet Coke with lemon in my direction; we clinked glasses.

“Stinson is a feeder judge,” I said, “but not a top, top feeder. Out of her four clerks each year, she feeds maybe one of them. It's not a done deal that her clerks go on to the Supreme Court. You have to excel.”

“That's fair,” Jeremy said. “You probably have to be her favorite clerk in your year. She's no Polanski.”

Ah yes, the Honorable M. Frank Polanski—a colleague of Stinson's on the Ninth Circuit, an indisputably brilliant jurist, and a possible Supreme Court nominee (handicapped mainly by his white-maleness, and partly by his reputation for being difficult). He was also, far and away, the top feeder judge in the country. Landing a Polanski clerkship was tantamount to landing a Supreme Court clerkship, since he had an almost perfect record of feeding his clerks to SCOTUS (with the help of the vast network of his former clerks, the Polanski Mafia).

“Judge Polanski, I kind of hate him sometimes,” I said. “He and his clerks hog all the Supreme Court clerkships. It's not fair.”

“If only you had won the editor-in-chief job,” said Jeremy. “Then you might have gotten a Polanski interview.”

“Stop torturing me! I'd be a lock for a Supreme Court clerkship as a
Yale Law Journal
EIC with a Polanski clerkship. And Polanski is an
amazing judge who's written some great opinions.”