Gregg Costa and Jeremy Gaston, both graduates from the Class of 1999, have accepted clerkships with the United States Supreme Court beginning in summer 2001. In any given year only eight or nine law schools in the country have more than one graduate clerking on the Court. This will be the second time in three years that two UT grads have clerked on the high court in the same term. Since 1995, eight UT law grads have been chosen as Supreme Court clerks, making the UT School of Law one of the top ten producers of clerks in the United States.
Costa, currently a clerk with Judge Raymond Randolph , U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, will clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Gaston, currently a clerk with Judge Patrick Higginbotham, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Dallas, will clerk for Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He will work for the law firm of Susman Godfrey in Houston until his Supreme Court clerkship begins.
Costa, who did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth College, was an outstanding student in law school. He won first place in the Thad Hutcheson First Year Moot Court Competition as well as first place and Best Brief in the Gibbs and Bruns Senior Moot Court Competition. He earned the rank of Vice Chancellor (second in class rank after the second year of law school), was selected by the Dean as a student representative to the Task Force on the Future of the Law School, and was elected by the third year class as permanent class representative. In addition, Costa served as Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Law Review, where his note, "John Marshall, the Sedition Act, and Free Speech in the Early Republic," was published last year. Throughout law school, he held the Ellen Waters Olson Endowed Presidential Scholarship.
Gaston, who did his undergraduate work at Stanford University, held the three-year Townes-Rice Scholarship at UT, where he was also Notes Editor of the Texas Law Review and compiled a 4.0 grade point averge. He was also elected to Chancellors and the Order of the Coif, the most prestigious honor societies for law students.
During 1998-1999, John-Christopher (J.C.) Rozendaal '97 and Patrick O'Daniel '92 clerked on the High Court, for Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, respectively.