In order to study the political ideologies of judicial law clerks in the United States, we construct a novel dataset that combines information on the identity of clerks with a measure of political ideology based on political donations. We then use this data to empirically investigate several important questions about the ideologies of clerks. First, we examine whether clerks tend to share the liberal ideology of other lawyers or the more conservative ideology associated with federal judges and find that clerks tend to be disproportionately liberal. Second, we investigate how the ideologies of clerks compares to the ideologies of lawyers and find that liberal lawyers are more likely to have clerked than conservatives. Third, we assess whether the ideologies of clerks differs based on the level of clerkship and find that the liberal skew becomes less pronounced as the prestige of the clerkship increases. Fourth, we analyze the relationship between ideology and the hiring of clerks and find that the ideology of judges is strongly correlated with the ideology of their clerks.

中文翻译：

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文员的政治思想

为了研究美国司法法律文员的政治意识形态，我们构建了一个新颖的数据集，该数据集将关于文员身份的信息与基于政治捐赠的某种政治意识形态相结合。然后，我们使用这些数据对有关职员的意识形态的几个重要问题进行实证研究。首先，我们检查文员是否倾向于分享其他律师的自由意识形态，或者与联邦法官相关的更为保守的意识形态，并发现文员倾向于不成比例的自由主义。其次，我们调查了文员的意识形态与律师的意识形态的比较情况，发现自由主义者的律师比保守派的律师更容易担任文职人员。第三，我们根据书记员的水平评估书记员的意识形态是否有所不同，并发现随着书记员声望的提高，自由派的偏见变得不那么明显。第四，我们分析了意识形态与职员的雇用之间的关系，发现法官的意识形态与其职员的意识形态密切相关。