The graphic depiction of these law clerk moves is one of the more interesting aspects of the study. In one depiction, Supreme Court justices are, not surprisingly, clustered in the middle, but — more surprisingly — district court judges are "suffused throughout the network," not relegated to the periphery. This is one representation, Katz and Stafford suggest, of the fact that judges with equivalent institutional authority in fact have different levels of influence. Below is one such figure from the paper — the Kamada Kawai Energized Network. (Yellow nodes are Supreme Court justices; green are appellate court; and blue are district court judges.)
It will be interesting to hear more from these authors as they apply their methods to other aspects of the judiciary.
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