“I applaud in general a commitment to hiring a diverse group of clerks, and hope all the justices encourage applicants of color, women and those with backgrounds beyond the usual elite,” said Elizabeth B. Wydra, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group that opposed Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Image Elizabeth B. Wydra, the president of a liberal law group, applauded Justice Kavanaugh for hiring female clerks but said his confirmation process had left lasting damage. Credit... Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

“Unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot more than female clerks to undo the damage to the legitimacy of the court done by this travesty of a confirmation process. Women will feel much more confident in the court when their fundamental rights are protected and their equal dignity is respected in the rulings handed down by the justices.”

Justice Kavanaugh’s supporters said he should be judged by his hiring record. “He’s been promoting professional opportunities for women his entire career,” said Porter Wilkinson, who served as a law clerk to Justice Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge and who was on his confirmation team.

New justices often hire their former clerks when they start at the court, but only one of Justice Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court clerks, Kim Jackson, worked for him on the appeals court. The other three — Shannon Grammel, Megan Lacy and Sara Nommensen — worked for appeals court judges appointed by Republican presidents.

Ms. Lacy had also worked for Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who helped push through Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Justice Kavanaugh said in his testimony last month that he had started to take action to address the underrepresentation of women among law clerks after reading a 2006 article in The New York Times noting that only seven of 37 Supreme Court clerks were women.

“A majority of my 48 law clerks over the last 12 years have been women,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “In my time on the bench, no federal judge — not a single one in the country — has sent more women law clerks to clerk on the Supreme Court than I have.”