NCLA Internship Spotlight

Ben Ogilvie

2023 Clerk

Law School: University of Chicago

Hometown: Minneapolis, MN Campus

Activities: I write for a UChicago student  newspaper, and I’m active in my Federalist Society chapter and a plaintiff’s law-focused student club.

Hobbies: Skydiving, rock climbing, writing op-eds.

What were your duties as an NCLA intern? I researched whether owners of cryptocurrency have a constitutional right to keep their records private and whether the SEC’s own internal governance practices violate the internal control expectations the SEC has in place for private companies. I also helped proofread the Supreme Court brief NCLA filed in Cargill v. Garland, which I now have a printed copy of.

What did you most enjoy about your internship? I enjoyed getting to know my class of clerks and the A-lister litigators who work for NCLA. They are very passionate about their work, and they are some of the best in the business when it comes to reforming administrative law through strategic litigation.

What interesting thing(s) did you learn about Administrative Law? Federal agencies can be awful to deal with from a customer service perspective: their immunity from due process and accountability has poisoned their internal culture on some level.

How might you use what you’ve learned later in your professional career? Interning here helped me realize that all law enforcement is ultimately political, and that managing personal relationships is key to making change and delivering results for clients.

Any advice for other students who want to intern at NCLA in the future? Do some nerding out on constitutional law before you get to NCLA, perhaps by reading Phillip Hamburger’s book The Administrative Threat or any of the work by his most prominent critics. It helps to have some background coming in.