Perhaps only you could conflate being a member of the Elect to the level of academic accomplishment of the Dean of Harvard Law.

I think Chimene was fairly clear in her point that the shift is to appointing career academics to prominent roles. Of the four names you mentioned, all had private practices before appointment to posts in the Bush administration; as far as I can tell, only one had taught at all (Clement was an adjunct at Gtown). Though, I should note that I can’t tell whether Elwood was in private practice or an academic, because I can’t even find a biography of him. But that seems to cut against him having any pre-OLC prominence whatsoever.

In contrast, all of the people nominated to the positions those four hold (Kagan, Katyal, Johnsen, Barron) are either full professors or the aforementioned Dean of HLS.

Now, one might have argued that there is no room in academia for conservatives, and that the outgoing folks achieved similar prominence in private practice. I’d disagree strongly with that argument, but at least it’s plausible. But that’s not the argument you made; rather, you implied that the four outgoing folks’ clerkships equaled prominent tenured faculty positions in terms of academic achievement.

Wow. Nice try.