Conservative journalist Mollie Hemingway spoke with more than 100 former Supreme Court clerks and staff for her forthcoming book on Justice Samuel Alito, and what they told her paints a sharp divide between how the Court's liberal and conservative justices treat the people who work for them.
The book, titled Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution, levels pointed allegations at Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Former clerks and Court personnel described Kagan as emotionally abusive and Sotomayor as dismissive of permanent staff, the Daily Mail reported.
The accounts stand in contrast to the descriptions of Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito, whom Hemingway's sources portrayed as kind and beloved by staff. That gap, between the public image of the Court's liberal wing and the private experience of those who serve it, is the thread running through Hemingway's latest work.
Hemingway's most striking claim centers on Kagan. Each justice typically takes four clerks per term, and those positions are among the most coveted in American law. But Hemingway described a different reality inside Kagan's chambers.
In her reporting, Hemingway said:
"Kagan's clerks had fear in their eyes."
Former clerks and others at the Court described Kagan as abusive or difficult to clerk for. Some aides speculated, Hemingway reported, that there was "something psychological going on there." No specific incidents were detailed in the Daily Mail's account, but the breadth of the sourcing, over 100 interviews, suggests the characterization was not an outlier.
Kagan's internal conduct has drawn attention before. A separate account alleged she berated Justice Stephen Breyer behind closed doors over the timing of the Dobbs dissent, a claim that further complicates the image of collegiality on the liberal side of the bench.
The allegations against Sotomayor involve the Court's permanent employees, the support staff who serve across administrations and terms. Hemingway reported that Sotomayor treated them like "valets," with stories of her "barking at them to help her carry her bags."
The characterization carries a specific sting. Clerks rotate through on one- or two-year stints. Permanent staff build careers at the Court. They have less leverage, fewer exit options, and no powerful alumni network to fall back on. Treating them as personal servants says something different than being demanding of a clerk headed to a partnership at a white-shoe firm.
Sotomayor has faced scrutiny for her conduct on the bench as well. She apologized for personal remarks about Justice Brett Kavanaugh in what amounted to a rare self-rebuke, an episode that raised broader questions about decorum among the Court's liberal members.
The Daily Mail reached out to the Supreme Court for comment and to representatives for Kagan and Sotomayor. No response was reported.
On the other side of the ideological divide, Hemingway's sources told a different story. Justice Clarence Thomas, she reported, is among the most beloved figures at the Court by staff. Alito, the 76-year-old subject of the book, was described as reserved but kind to clerks and staff alike.
That portrait of Alito matters because it cuts against years of media framing that cast him as a rigid ideologue. Hemingway's book covers his authored opinions defending gun rights and limiting the power of labor unions, but the personal dimension, how a justice treats the people around him when no cameras are rolling, tells its own story.
Hemingway previously authored a 2019 book about the confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh, as well as Trump vs the Media in 2017 and Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections in 2021. She appeared on Fox News to discuss the new book's findings.
The book also revisits the 2022 leak of Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. Hemingway made a pointed accusation about what followed the leak: that liberal justices delayed finalizing their dissent for nearly two months.
Her implication was blunt. Hemingway said on Fox News:
"If they'd killed one of the majority justices, Roe would not have been overturned. The liberals knew that, and they delayed their dissent for nearly two months."
The leak triggered a wave of protests outside justices' homes. Hemingway reported that amid death threats, justices had to wear bulletproof vests. The security environment became so severe that the Trump administration later requested $58 million to protect Supreme Court justices and executive branch figures, a request that came after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Hemingway did not mince words about the institutional response at the time. She said:
"It's just unconscionable... I do think that the justices were very frustrated that they got no help from Merrick Garland, and they got no help from the Department of Justice."
Congress, Hemingway added, did little to protect the justices, though it had previously approved additional funding for its own security ahead of last year's August recess. The contrast speaks for itself: lawmakers secured their own protection while the justices who overturned Roe faced threats with inadequate support.
The political battle over the Court's composition continues to intensify. Liberal figures have rallied donors to preemptively block future Trump nominees, a sign that the fight over the bench is far from cooling down.
The allegations against Kagan and Sotomayor fit a broader pattern that conservative observers have noted for years: progressive leaders who champion empathy and equity in public while running abusive operations behind closed doors. The Daily Mail drew a parallel to Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who faced a New York Times report about her alleged poor treatment of her own staff.
The comparison is instructive. When Klobuchar's staff treatment became public, it was treated as a character issue. The same standard should apply to life-tenured justices who answer to no electorate and face no performance review.
Sotomayor's broader conduct on the bench has drawn its own criticism. Her personal attack on Kavanaugh marked what many saw as a new low for Supreme Court decorum, and the insider accounts in Hemingway's book suggest that the public behavior may reflect a private disposition.
Meanwhile, friction within the liberal bloc itself has surfaced publicly. Kagan rebuked fellow liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in a footnote over a free speech ruling, a rare crack in what the media typically presents as a unified progressive front.
Hemingway's book raises questions that the available reporting does not yet resolve. It remains unclear whether her sources spoke on the record or anonymously. The Supreme Court has not responded to the allegations. No specific incidents, dates, confrontations, or formal complaints, have been detailed in the excerpts reported so far.
The release date for the book has not been announced. When it arrives, the full sourcing and specificity of the claims will matter. But the sheer scale of the reporting, more than 100 interviews, suggests Hemingway did not build her case on a handful of disgruntled former employees.
The Supreme Court operates behind a veil thicker than any other branch of government. No confirmation hearings for clerks. No inspector general. No FOIA. The justices set their own rules and police their own conduct. When someone pulls back that curtain and 100 voices say the same thing, the institution owes the public more than silence.
People who preach fairness from the bench ought to practice it in the hallway. If they can't manage that, the public deserves to know.
