A Christmas Present for Congress: the Congressional Clerkship Program

On Balkinization, Abbe Gluck and Dakota Rudesill announce that a group of senators, including Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, have revived the idea of a congressional clerkship program:

In this era of gridlock and difficult politics, a bipartisan group of Senators has done something worth celebrating.  On Monday, with the introduction of the Daniel Webster Congressional Clerkship Act, S. 3499, the Senate has taken the first step not only toward busting the judicial clerkship monopoly on mentoring fresh young law graduates but also toward bridging the enormous gap–a gap in both information and respect–between Congress and the courts.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), would create a dozen clerkship positions in Congress for recent law school graduates, equally divided across chambers and political parties.  The bill envisions them competitively funded at the same level as their federal judicial counterparts.

We have discussed before the benefits that such a program would provide, particularly with respect to evening the legal playing field between the legislative and executive branches. It is a start toward, as they say in the LBCWG, “making Congress great again.”

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