Once Again Breyer Blames His Law Clerk

October 8th, 2013

I’ve commented before that a common technique of Justice Breyer is to ask an advocate if he is wrong, and note that his law clerks couldn’t find something. He did so again during McCutcheon:

JUSTICE BREYER: All we’re trying to do, because it’s hard to do in oral argument. But what we’re trying to do in both, I think, our cases is that we looked up all the rules and the regs — or my law clerk did — and — and what she discovered, and it may be wrong because I’ll look at it again, is there has been no significant change in the earmarking rules, in any of the rules that you’re talking about, but for one, change since Buckley.

So there’s Breyer’s tell. When he mentions his law clerk, he is trying to prove that something doesn’t exist.

And if ATL’s list is to believed, either Julia or Sara worked this case.