Negative Salaries for Supreme Court Clerks

The most prestigious job a law school graduate can get is a clerkship on the U.S. Supreme court. Such clerks often ghost write Supreme court opinions. The clerkships last one or two years.

Law firms are so impressed with Supreme court clerks that they often pay them $200,000 starting bonuses. The prestige of having been a Supreme court clerk probably helps the clerks throughout their entire career and so likely increases their lifetime earnings by well more than $1 million.

So I propose that Supreme court clerks be required to pay $1 million to the government. They shouldn't have to pay the money right away, but rather could borrow funds to pay their $1 million negative salary over 10 to 30 years.

Only the top law students from the best law schools normally have any chance at getting a clerkship. Even if they never get a clerkship these students will earn salaries that put them in the top 1% of the U.S. income distribution. It seems extremely unfair for the government to give some of these students jobs that will allow them to get an extra few million over their lifetimes. The government, therefore, should capture some of the gain of working as a Supreme Court clerk and "pay" clerks a salary of negative $1 million.