Katharine Janes ’21 To Clerk at U.S. Supreme Court

Katharine Janes, a 2021 J.D.-M.A. graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, will clerk for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2024 term, joining two classmates who have also lined up clerkships for that term.

“I feel like the luckiest lawyer in the country, and this opportunity means so much to me,” said Janes, who graduated from UVA’s J.D.-M.A. Program in History. “I’m a public defender with a background in legal history, and I am excited to clerk for a justice who herself was a public defender, and who so intelligently and honestly employs history to reason through our nation’s most intractable legal issues.”

With Janes’ clerkship, it will be the first time five alums from the same graduating class have clerked at the Supreme Court since the Class of 1981 (see sidebar). Erin Brown ’21 will clerk for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Rachel Daley ’21 will clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, also for the 2024 term. Their classmates Nathaniel Sutton and Avery Rasmussen are currently clerking for Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh for the 2023 term.

The Law School is No. 5 after Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Chicago in placing clerks on the U.S. Supreme Court from the 2007 through 2023 terms.

Janes is currently a staff attorney at the New Hampshire Public Defender. She also worked for the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.

Janes previously clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

At UVA Law, Janes was a Karsh-Dillard Scholar, a Program in Law and Public Service Fellow, a Community Fellow, and a Katherine and David deWilde ’67 Public Interest Fellow. She served as president of the Student Bar Association, online development editor of the Virginia Law Review and co-director of Virginia Law Women’s Speak Up Project. She was also a participant in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, a member of the Raven Society, an Order of the Coif inductee and a Peer Advisor.

Janes was a research assistant for Dean Risa Goluboff, and Professors Richard Bonnie ’69 and Andrew Block. She won the school’s Margaret G. Hyde Award for character and scholarship, and the Bracewell LLP Appellate Advocacy Award for outstanding oral advocacy. Her master’s thesis was “Abe Fortas and Juvenile Justice: The Revolution Secured in In re Gault.”

Professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, a former law school roommate of Jackson’s, advised and got to know Janes as a student.

“Katharine Janes embodies an array of strengths that make her a shining example of the best and brightest at UVA Law,” Robinson said. “During her time here, she not only served as a leader in several organizations and excelled academically, she also demonstrated a deep commitment to using her law degree to advance social justice. I have had the privilege of getting to know Katharine personally, and she is a person of deep integrity, humility and drive. I am thrilled that she will be Justice Jackson’s first law clerk from UVA Law.”

Janes said her work with the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which included drafting a cert petition and an amicus brief, particularly improved her legal writing. She was grateful for in-depth feedback from “some of the best legal minds in the country” and said she hopes to continue enhancing those skills at the high court.

Janes credits the mentorship of Bonnie, Goluboff and Robinson, as well as that of Professors Charles Barzun ’05, faculty adviser for the J.D.-M.A. Program in History, and Cynthia Nicoletti, a legal historian, for contributing to her success.

Janes highlighted how the master’s program provided her with new tools to consider how the law came to be, rather than simply what the law says and how it is applied today.

“It was such a great change of pace to use my brain in different ways and to learn different methodologies,” she said. “Today, I can’t imagine looking at an issue from a purely legal or purely historical perspective.”

Janes, a native of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Correction: This story originally reported that one alum who clerked, Ray Campbell, was in the Class of 1981. He is a member of the Class of 1983.