Why did Justice Kennedy hire 4 clerks for the upcoming Oct 2018 term?

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32. or maybe he wasn't certain about retiring 8 months ago when he was hiring clerks

SCOTUS justices start interviewing (directly or indirectly) prospective clerks about a year in advance and usually have their clerks lined up before the end of the year -- and that appears to be the case with Kennedy, who had made hiring decisions for the October 2018 term back in December 2017.

So maybe he wasn't sure what he was going to do. In that situation, the logical thing to do would be to hire clerks, since the deeper into the year, the more difficult it would get (and other justices might have gobbled up the most attractive candidates).

While I opted not to pursue a court clerkship while in law school, several of my classmates did. Those that accepted positions with older judges did so with the knowledge that the judge that hired them might decide to retire by the time their clerkships were scheduled to start.