LAWYERS AND THE UNITED-STATES-SUPREME-COURT - THE WASHINGTON COMMUNITY AND LEGAL ELITES

The past several decades have witnessed tremendous growth in the numbe r of professional representatives in the Washington community. Despite a wealth of research that testifies to the importance of these expert s in the legislative and executive branches, we know comparatively lit tle regarding sophisticated representation in the judicial context. Is there an identifiable group of specialized representatives in the U.S . Supreme Court? Under the rubric of network theory, I examine the bar of the Court and the patterns of association within it. With survey d ata from lawyers who participated in Supreme Court litigation during t he 1986 term, I develop a predictive model that suggests that the lawy ers in the Court are a discrete collection of representatives, strongl y anchored in Washington, DC. While many are connected through legal e ducation, geography, and generational affinity, the core of that group -former law clerks to the justices, alumni of the Solicitor General's office, and the lawyers of the leading law firms in Washington-are the prominent experts within that network.