Further, the essay concludes: « For now, membership in the Supreme Court Bar Association remains secret. » The U.S. Supreme Court conceals the names of lawyers who are members of the Supreme Court Bar Association. This lack of transparency is unusual and raises many concerns. If the Supreme Court does not follow the lead of courts across the country and publish its members of the bar, Congress should intervene. The journal also lists all members who are excluded. It is true that the Supreme Court does not have a searchable database of all members. And there is no easy way to determine if members have died. But it is simply not true that the composition of the Court is « shrouded in secrecy ». I thank Josh Blackman of Volokh Conspiracy for pointing out that the Supreme Court Journal lists members of the Supreme Court bar for the year they are admitted. Such measures, while better than nothing, fall far short of established practice in terms of transparency and would further facilitate the creation by the Court of a searchable database, similar to that described in this article.
For the sake of clarity and to address this valid point, minor changes have been made. The Georgetown Policy Review published an essay by Henry Baumgarten titled « Open the Bar: Towards Greater Supreme Court Transparency. » It begins: Update: Yesterday I sent an email to the Georgetown Journal of Policy. The online editor immediately replied and informed me that the author had reviewed the essay. The article now contains the following two notes: For example, scroll down to page 649 of the October 2015 Journal. You will find the note of my admission to the Supreme Court Bar. (Zubik v. Burwell was argued that day.) Barely. The Supreme Court publishes the name of each member admitted and the name of each member subject to disciplinary measures. Where is this information recorded? Most people, and perhaps the author of the essay, are not familiar with the Supreme Court Journal. It is published annually and published on the Court`s website. I appreciate that they made these corrections so quickly. The original version is preserved here.
NEXT: President Obama`s memoirs contain virtually nothing about the Supreme Court (Update) This article was originally published on the 28th. November 2020 and included a decoding in italics at the beginning of the article, written by the editorial team of GPPR Online. It incorrectly summarized the author`s argument and has been revised.