Pathways to SCOTUS Stardom

For more than a century, most lawyers who showed up at the Supreme Court for arguments were one shotters.  But starting in the mid 1980s, a new breed of lawyer emerged.  The SCOTUS superstar; someone who was a specialist in making arguments to SCOTUS, showed up repeatedly, and usually possessed the most elite of legal credentials possible.  No prizes for guessing the gender and race of most of these SCOTUS superstars.  (Aside -- SOOTUS superstars also existed in the early 1800s, but probably for different reasons).

A number of scholars have documented the rise of this new type of lawyer and legal specialty - included here are Kevin McGuire, Richard Lazarus, and H.W. Perry.  There has also been interesting work on the question of the impact of this new type of lawyer (they win more and are much better than others at getting cert granted - as work by Adam Feldman & Alexander Kappner has shown).

There has thus far, however, been little attention paid to the dynamics of the gender disparity among SCOTUS superstars.  Megan Lemon's excellent new paper, Pathways to the Podium, does just that using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data.  The findings from the interviews Megan did with a number of these superstars are fascinating.  One of the implications of Megan's study seems to be that men are able to more easily and quickly achieve and monetize their superstardom.