Three Alumni to Clerk on US Supreme Court in 2022-2023 Term
Three University of Chicago Law School alumni will clerk on the US Supreme Court during the October 2022 term. Bijan Aboutorabi, ’18, will clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, and David Suska, ’16 and Lael Weinberger, ’18, will clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Aboutorabi previously clerked for Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Judge Amul R. Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Justice Jay Mitchell of the Supreme Court of Alabama. At the Law School, he was a Rubenstein Scholar, a Kirkland & Ellis Scholar, and a member of the Order of the Coif, the Federalist Society, and The University of Chicago Law Review.
Suska, who clerked for Judge Frank Easterbrook of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit after graduating from the Law School, has worked since 2019 as an Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel at the US Department of Justice. Before that, he was an associate at Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, PLLC, in Washington, DC. At the Law School, he was named a Lynde and Harry Bradley Student Fellow and a Patiño Fellow, and he was a member of the Federalist Society.
Weinberger, who earned a PhD in history from UChicago in 2021, is the Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow in Law and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He has clerked for Easterbrook and Chief Justice Daniel Eismann on the Idaho Supreme Court.
At the Law School, Weinberger was a Kirkland & Ellis Scholar, a member of the Order of the Coif, the president of the Christian Legal Society, and the articles editor on the University of Chicago Law Review. He also earned the Caplan Prize and the Casper Platt Award.
“Bijan, David, and Lael were superb students during their three years here, and we have no doubt that they will be equally superb clerks for the Court,” said Jonathan Masur, the John P. Wilson Professor of Law, a chair of the faculty clerkship committee.
The Law School has had at least one graduate clerking on the Supreme Court for at least part of every term since 1972, and in 40 of the past 50 years, two or more clerks on the Supreme Court have been alumni of the Law School.