Henry Dickman, a 2020 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, will clerk for Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the U.S. Supreme Court for the 2022 term.
Dickman clerked for Barrett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit until she was appointed to the Supreme Court in October 2020. He said he’s honored to serve the country and the court.
“As a longtime law professor, Justice Barrett is, at her core, a teacher,” Dickman said. “I had a brief chance to learn from her on the Seventh Circuit, and now I have the opportunity to do so for a full year. I couldn’t be more excited.”
The Law School is fifth after Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Chicago in placing clerks on the U.S. Supreme Court from the 2007 through 2021 terms. Libby Baird ’19 is clerking now for Barrett for the 2021 term, and Michael Corcoran ’17 will clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas for the 2022 term.
Dickman is currently clerking for Judge Gregory Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and clerked for Chief Judge Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit after Barrett departed. While in law school, he also interned for Judge Trevor McFadden ’06 of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Dickman said UVA Law has the best professors and learning environment in the country, and his classes prepared him well for the clerkship.
“I had such phenomenal teachers who helped me to not only understand current legal doctrine but also to identify tensions within it,” he said, “and of course next year I’ll be working on cases that grapple with those tensions.”
At UVA Law, Dickman was a Karsh-Dillard Scholar who won the 91st William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition with teammate Megan Mers ’20, and won the Roger and Madeleine Traynor Prize for his paper “Conflicts of Precedent.” He was also inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review, and vice president for speakers and treasurer of the St. Thomas More Society.
He said being a part of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic helped him learn how the high court works and understand the issues the justices care about. Dickman also credits Professors Aditya Bamzai, George Cohen, John Duffy, Caleb Nelson and Ann Woolhandler for contributing to his success.
“Henry is extraordinarily smart and hard-working. He’s also thoughtful, fair-minded and decent,” Nelson said. “I’m thrilled for him, and I know that he’ll do a terrific job for Justice Barrett.”
As a Supreme Court clerk, Dickman said he hopes to continue improving his writing, which has “already come a long way” with his appellate clerkships.
“Justice Barrett is a really crisp writer. She has a knack for taking a convoluted concept and boiling it down into terms that anyone can quickly understand,” he added. “Whether by absorption or through direct instruction, I hope that I’ll become a more effective writer over the course of the year.”
Dickman earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame.
Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.
