Supplementing the Record: The Life and Career of Judge Edmund L. Palmieri

For approximately ninety years, lower federal court judges have hired law clerks to process the work of the courts. While the law clerks typically go on to successful careers as attorneys, law professors, government officials, and judges, it is rare that the former apprentices become so famous that their mentors are lost in their oversized shadows. This is the case, however, for former federal district court judge Edmund L. Palmieri. A highly respected jurist who sat in the Southern District of New York for over three decades, Palmieri has seemingly become the answer to the following trivial pursuit question: “What federal judge hired a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg as his law clerk?”