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Monday, August 14, 2017
Supreme Court to Require E-Filing
The Supreme Court recently announced that on November 13, 2017, its electronic filing system will be up and running. Thankfully, the Court's program will not be part of the PACER system. Rather, according to the National Journal, the Court's main page will include a button for "Electronic Filing." The filings will be "accessible without cost to the public and legal community."
While this is a huge step forward for the Court, it will not, initially, eliminate the requirement that parties file paper copies. According to the Court's press release,
Initially the official filing of documents will continue to be on paper in all cases, but parties who are represented by counsel will also be required to submit electronic versions of documents through the electronic filing system. The filings will then be posted to the Court's docket and made available to the public through the Court's website. Filings from parties appearing pro se will not be submitted through the electronic filing system, but will be scanned by Court personnel and made available for public access on the electronic docket.
E-filing has been around for some time, and is mandatory in most, if not all, federal courts. It is slowly taking over in the state courts too. The National Center for State Courts provides information on the state of e-filing in the states, including links to the various court rules.
While e-filing certainly has its strengths, it doesn't mean that one can procrastinate to file a brief until minutes before it is due. Be sure to understand the requirements for e-filing in your jurisdiction, including any size limitations and the amount of time it takes to get a login.
August 14, 2017 in Appellate Practice, United States Supreme Court, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, July 31, 2017
Follow the Rules!
I recently received a link to a Seventh Circuit in-chambers opinion that I thought was worth sharing. On July 10, Chief Judge Diane Wood issued an in-chambers opinion striking briefs in two cases. The briefs, one a respondent brief from the Attorney General and the other an appellee brief from the Air Line Pilots Association, were stricken for failing to comply with court rules. So what court rule did these parties fail to follow? Circuit Rules 3(c)(1) and 28 on jurisdictional statements.
This is surprising, as the briefs that were stricken were from an appellee and a respondent. As Chief Judge Wood explains, however, appellees and respondents have responsibilities too when it comes to the jurisdictional statement. While appellees and respondents are exempted "from filing a jurisdictional statement unless it is 'dissatisfied' with the appellant's statement," Seventh Circuit Rules "direct[] that '[t]he appellee's brief shall state explicitly whether or not the jurisdictional summary in the appellant's brief is complete and correct. If it is not, the appellee shall provide a complete jurisdictional summary.'"
As the Chief Judge points out, "The job of the appellee is to review the appellant's jurisdictional statement to see if it is both complete and correct. These terms are not synonyms." So where did the briefs of the Attorney General and the Air Line Pilots Association fall short? With respect to the Attorney General's brief, the jurisdictional statement only said that the appellant's statement was correct, not that it was complete. Chief Judge Wood explained, "If the Department [of Justice] concludes that Mr. Baez‐ Sanchez's jurisdictional statement is both complete and correct, it should say so in the amended brief." As for the Air Line Pilots Association, while their statement said that the appellant's statement was complete, but mentioned nothing about correctness. Chief Judge Wood directed the Association to "review the appellants' jurisdictional statement for both completeness and correctness, and if the statement is wanting on either score, . . . supply a comprehensive statement that complies with FRAP 28(a) and Circuit Rule 28(a)."
So what is the moral of this story? Follow the rules. In both cases, the jurisdictional statements would have been perfectly acceptable if they had two additional words. Now, the parties will have to incur the costs (both in time and money) of filing amended briefs.
Filing a brief that comports with the rules of the jurisdiction should not be such a difficult endeavor. As Chief Judge Wood notes in her opinion, the Seventh Circuit even provides a checklist to assist litigants follow the rules. Other legal writing books or courts provide similar lists or examples. As lawyers, we can, and should, do better.
July 31, 2017 in Appellate Practice, Federal Appeals Courts, Legal Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, June 26, 2017
Lexis Acquires Ravel Law
Earlier this month, LexisNexis announced that is has acquired Ravel Law. My guess is that many of our readers have not heard of Ravel Law. According to their website:
Ravel is analytical research, a new category of intelligent tool that combines legal research and analytics. Powered by expert legal knowledge, machine learning, and comprehensive caselaw from the Harvard Law Library, Ravel is built by digital natives for 21st Century practice.
Ravel enables lawyers to find what's important, understand why it's important, and put that information to use in the most persuasive way possible. In short, we turn legal information into legal insights.
Ravel's intuitive array of data-driven tools are built from the ground up for the hardest questions, transforming how lawyers understand the law and prepare for litigation.
I first heard of Ravel a year or so ago. I was particularly impressed by their Judge Analytics. They market the product as helping you "[u]nderstand how judges think, write, and rule." I think that description is spot-on. Judge Analytics allows you to find "cases, circuits, and judges your judge finds most persuasive" and "rules and specific language your judge favors and commonly cites." For appellate advocates appearing before an unfamiliar court, this is an incredibly important research tool. It is also useful for students applying for clerk-ships. It collects all of your judge research in one place.
I don't have a lot to say about Ravel's other features. I, personally, did not find Ravel's case research to be as useful, but that might be because I did not spend enough time reviewing it. The connections and graphs were a little too much for me. I suspect, however, that millennials might really like that feature.
Unfortunately, integrating Ravel into Lexis is going to take some time. When I called Lexis Advance to ask about the time frame, I was told that the integration would be complete in the first quarter of 2018. Congratulations to Lexis and Ravel--I suspect that this will be a great deal for both organizations.
June 26, 2017 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Legal Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, March 20, 2017
To "Um" or Not--A Discussion of Disfluencies for Lawyers, Professors, and Students
As a moot court coach, I teach my students to not use disfluencies like "um" or "uh" in their oral arguments. According to Prof. Barbara Gotthelf's article, A Lawyer's Guide to Um, my dislike of these disfluencies is not unique, but it might be wrong. After hearing a moot court judge critique an advocate for her use of "uh" and "um," Prof. Gotthelf "began consulting books on public speaking, including texts written specifically for lawyers, and they all gave the impression that using uh and um might be the single worst thing any speaker could do." Having previously heard from a psycholinguist that "using uh and um was not only 'perfectly normal,' but also helpful in furthering effective communication," Prof. Gotthelf dug even further into the literature and found "a body of scientific literature that supports Dr. Shriberg's views and demonstrates that, contrary to public perception, uh and um are not only inevitable, but actually useful bits of communication."
Prof. Gotthelf's response to the "um fixation" is expressed in the article, which was published by Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD and is available here. I haven't had a chance to review it in depth, but I look forward to doing so soon (at least in advance of the below event).
In addition to publishing the article, Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD is holding a live Facebook discussion of the article. Below is the announcement that I received regarding the event. I am sure that it will be, uh, a great discussion.
Gearing up for spring oral argument competitions? Join Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD for a live Facebook chat-based discussion of Professor Barbara Gotthelf's article, The Lawyer's Guide to Um. This article about disfluencies like "um" and "uh" should be of particular interest to moot court advisors, practitioners, law students, and anyone who teaches oral argument. Should verbal fillers be vilified? Read the article and come weigh in!
The chat will take place on Thursday, April 6 at 3pm Eastern. Professor Jennifer Romig of Emery University School of Law will moderate. To participate in the discussion, join the LC&R Discussion Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/304595676586667/. You may join at any time in advance of the chat. When you join, you can check out the archives of our previous discussions.
Professor Gotthelf's article can be found here on the Journal's website: http://www.alwd.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/01-Gotthelf_Web.pdf
The Group invites participation by lawyers, law professors, professors from communications and other fields, legal professionals, law students, and anyone with an interest in law and legal communication. It is a forum for the free exchange of ideas with civility and mutual respect.
March 20, 2017 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Moot Court, Oral Argument | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, December 9, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup December 9 2016
As we do every Friday, the Appellate Advocacy Blog presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email email@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
Ruling in Samsung v. Apple
On Tuesday, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in favor of Samsung in Samsung v. Apple, the patent infringement suit brought by Apple, sending the case back to the Federal Circuit for further consideration. In the case, Apple alleged that Samsung infringed on patents covering specific design elements of Apple's iPhone, including the rectangular front face with rounded corners and colorful grid of icons. Federal law provides that companies found to have infringed design patents on an "article of manufacture" are liable for their total profits. The lower court had awarded Apple $399 million in damages for Samsung's design patent infringement. In the Supreme Court opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the operative phrase in the statute, "article of manufacture," could sometimes be the entire product (the phone) and sometimes be the components found to have infringed the design patent. The Supreme Court opinion held that the Federal Circuit erred in ruling that the "article of manufacture" must always be the end product (the phone), but did not resolve whether the article of manufacture in the case was the whole phone or parts of it.
Ruling in Salman v. United States
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Salman v. United States, a significant insider trading case that raised the question of whether gifts of confidential information from business insiders to family members without direct financial benefit violate securities law. The Court ruled in favor of prosecutors, ruling that gifts to friends or relatives, whether in the form of cash or a tip of information, sufficiently "benefit" the insider to be considered a violation of securities law.
Takeaways from 2016 SCOTUS Oral Arguments So Far:
Adam Feldman writes on the Empirical SCOTUS blog about "Four Takeaways From this Term's 2016 SCOTUS Oral Arguments" so far. There is a wealth of great information about the Justices' interactions with one another and with advocates during the first 1/3 of this term's oral arguments, including which Justices tend to speak the most (or the least), the issues that interest the Justices the most, and the tendencies of some of the best and most frequent advocates to appear before the Court.
Highlights from Appellate Twitter: #PracticeTuesday
On Tuesdays the brilliant tweeters of #AppellateTwitter post a variety of useful tips, strategies, guidelines, advice, etc. Here are a few of the highlights from this week, where the topic was mythbusting -- conventional wisdom with which experienced appellate practitioners disagree:
- Sean Marotta (@smmarotta) argued against the myth that a law student should take "any" clerkship, regardless of location, judge, etc. He argued that young graduates should definitely consider costs to family, significant others, and other factors when deciding whether a clerkship is really the right opportunity to pursue.
- Rachel Gurvich (@RachelGurvich) argued against one of my personal favorite myths, that being on Law Review is some kind of prerequisite to a successful legal career. I always tell students that law review is not for everyone and is not a magic bullet -- the key is to find something that catches a potential employer's eye and once you get your foot in the door, you can explain why you didn't go the law review route.
- Bryan Gividen (@BryanGivi) argued against the myth that a young associate should never so no to an assignment -- because if you don't learn how to say no to assignments that you cannot perform well, you are sure to start alienating colleagues and clients with poor work product.
- Jennifer Romig (@JenniferMRomig) argued against one that is dear to my heart, as an educator -- the myth that law school conclusively reveals whether someone will be a good lawyer. I've known many students who were "average" or even below in performance in law school, but went on to be fine and highly successful members of the legal community -- even some who took a couple of tries to pass the bar exam. I've known students who excelled in classes, but not so much in the real world. There's just more to it than that.
- Finally, Supreme Court Places (@SCOTUSPlaces) called for the debunking of a myth that is near and dear to the hearts of anyone who has ever clerked for an appellate court -- "There must be a case for that simple, seemingly incontrovertable proposition." It's amazing how often you think that but research seems to come up empty!
December 9, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Current Affairs, Federal Appeals Courts, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, November 4, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
Here are a handful of tidbits on appellate practice from around the web this past week. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email firstname.lastname@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
#AppellateTwitter Threads of the Week:
BobLoeb, of Orrick's Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation practice, started a thread on Twitter this week asking for training or advice tips that were useful to appellate practitioners when they first got started. Lots of great appellate advocates weighed in with some great tips.
While the #AppellateTwitter hashtag has really started to take off, one of its contributors, UNC Law Professor Gurvich, announced plans to start a #PracticeTuesday hashtag for weekly conversations about discussions related to best practices and tips for effective appellate practice. Readers of this blog will surely want to look for that hashtag and tune in.
Just before this past week (Friday, October 28), the Supreme Court announced that it would hear a challenge to a Virginia school district's anti-transgender restroom policy. The case, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., arises out of a school district policy mandating that students use the restroom matching their biological sex. A transgender student sued, with the support of the ACLU. The trial court ruled in favor of the school district, but the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the student's favor. More information available at the ACLU website and at SCOTUSBlog.
The Miami Herald reported this week on an interesting case where the United States and Venezuala are joining on the same side against a U.S. oil company. The case, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuala v. Helmerich & Payne International, was heard on Wednesday of this week. In the case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit determined whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction over a lawsuit against a foreign government by looking only at whether the claim was insubstantial or frivolous. More at SCOTUSBlog.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal for Alabama death row inmate Bill Kuenzel. The case involved Kuenzel's claims that evidence was withheld by prosecutors, and gained some national attention when former Attorney General Edwin Meese weighed in and suggested that Kuenzel is "very likely actually innocent." The AP reported.
Finally, Billboard magazine reported this week that the Supreme Court has asked for the U.S. Solicitor General to provide the government's view about a nearly decade-old dispute between a mother who posted a 29-second video clip on YouTube of her toddler dancing to the Prince hit, "Let's Go Crazy." She received a takedown notice, and the mother sued and raised misrepresentation of copyright and fair use issues. Neither side was satisfied with the mixed opinion of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court has not yet granted review in the case, but the request of the Solicitor General suggests there is a possibility that such a grant could be forthcoming.
Obama's Judicial Legacy:
Law.com ran a feature this past week, including lots of graphics, analyzing how President Obama's judicial appointments have shaped the federal courts and where changes have started to be evident. Charleston Law professor Jennifer North wrote about that topic right here at the Appellate Advocacy Blog earlier this week.
November 4, 2016 in Appellate Practice, Legal Profession, Legal Writing, Oral Argument, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, October 28, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
Here are a handful of tidbits on appellate practice from around the web this past week. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email firstname.lastname@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
Continuing Impacts of the Supreme Court Vacancy
This week, Lyle Denniston (@lylden) took a look at three Supreme Court cases that were accepted right before Justice Scalia's death, but haven't received an oral argument date yet. Denniston noted that the cases have intentionally been bypassed as hearings have been scheduled, and argued that the most likely reason for the intentional bypassing of these three cases – which have been waiting the longest to be argued – is that the Justices are inclined to think that they would wind up in 4-to-4 splits.
One of the cases, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, is about school access to a state government program for turning tires into playground sufaces. The case implicates state constitutional clauses in more than 30 states that deny equal access to government benefits for an organization that is a house of worship or is directly affiliated with one.
The second case, Murr v. Wisconsin, involves the question of how private property is defined when the government seeks to prevent or regulate development because of environmental concerns.
The third case, Microsoft v. Baker, involves suit by a group of consumers in Washington against Microsoft, in which they complain that the Xbox 360 had a defect that caused its optical disc to damage the machine to the point that it was unplayable. Although the plaintiffs in the suit were denied class action status, they managed to get the case dismissed in a manner that allowed them to appeal as a class.
Each of the three cases involves matters in which Justice Scalia had been outspoken in decisions in recent years.
Posner Declares the Supreme Court "Awful"
Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals made headlines again this week. This time, the headlines stemmed from a recent appearance at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago, in connection with the launch of a biography on Posner.
At the event, Posner said that he was working on a new book about the federal judicary. He said that he had "about ten pages on the strengths and about 320 pages on the weaknesses." Posner continued to say that he was "very critical" and that he does not "think the judges are very good. [He thinks] the Supreme Court is awful. . . . Probably only a couple of the justices, Breyer and Ginsburg, are qualified. They're okay, they're not great."
Posner criticized federal judges, including the Supreme Court Justices, as lacking intellect – suggesting that they are appointed for appearance purposes and use clerks to do much of their work. He asserted that the Supreme Court Justices lacked extensive trial experience. And he criticized their writing, suggesting that Breyer and Ginsburg are the only ones who author readable opinions. He also took issue with formalisms like res judicata and continued reliance on precedent.
Posner even took issue with the fact that judges call their offices "chambers," attributing the practice to fourteenth century French language.
(Hat Tip: Above the Law @atlblog )
Clarence Thomas' Majority by Dissent and Jeffrey Toobin's Disdain
Adam White had a piece this week at the Weekly Standard where he discussed Jeffrey Toobin's latest critical piece about Justice Clarence Thomas. Toobin's latest piece in the New Yorker reflected on Justice Thomas' 25-year anniversary with the Supreme Court. White noted that Toobin's premise in the latest piece is that Thomas does not write any significant majority opinions and instead focuses mostly on dissenting from others' opinions and has been "on a Court of his own" for his career with the Supreme Court.
White disagrees with the premise. White notes that Thomas has written dozens of majority opinions, including ones in cases "on questions of state sovereignty, the First Amendment, antitrust, and . . . administrative law." White also contends that it doesn't matter how many majority opinions he has written – because Thomas authors concurrences and dissents, spelling out his own reasoning, and emphasizing his view of original intent in Constitutional thinking. Thomas also notes that while Toobin has praised other justices, like Ginsburg, for being "influential in different ways," he seems to turn a blind eye to that same thought when looking at Justice Thomas.
Adnan Syed's Lawyers Motion for Bail
Adnan Syed, whose murder case was spotlighted on the popular podcast, "Serial," in 2014, has remained incarcerated despite a ruling more than three months granting him a new trial. This week, his lawyers filed a motion asking that he be released on bail. The filing asserted that "Syed has now served more than 17 years in prison based on an unconstitutional conviction for a crime he did not commit."
ABA's Unease Over Trump Article Results in First Amendment Debate
A media lawyer in California, Susan Seager, authored an article reviewing Donald Trump's history as a libel plaintiff. In the article, Seager called Trump a "libel bully" and a "libel loser," because of his record of losing such cases. Her article was originally supposed to run in Communications Lawyer, a quarterly newsletter of an ABA member group. In mid-October, however, discussion between ABA deputy executive director James Dimos, the newsletter's editors, and Seager, resulted in Seager pulling the piece and having it published online at medialaw.org.
Among the suggested edits were recommended deletions of "direct references to Trump as a bully, a description of Trump as 'orange haired and orange tinged,' and a statement that Trump lacked a sense of humor." Additionally, the suggested edits included changing the proposed title of the article from "Donald J. Trump is a Libel Bully but also a Libel Loser," to "Preseidential Election Demonstrates Need for anti-SLAPP Laws."
Although the ABA disputes that its expressed concerns and suggested edits to Seager's language amounted to blocking the initial publication, media lawyers have expressed concern and called the situation an example of censorship.
According to the ABA, the concerns expressed about the language of the article were based on concerns about whether the pointed language in the article amounted to "[n]ame calling and questioning Mr. Trump's mental capacity," were "ad hominem attacks [that could] increase the risk of the ABA being sued by Mr. Trump," and were inconsistent with the ABA's strong policy of being a nonpartisan organization.
SCOTUS Celebrity News
Apparently Chief Justice Roberts and his wife recently purchased a second home on an island off the midcoast of Maine. Although the price was not disclosed, a 15-year mortgage for $1Million was filed.
(Hat Tip: Howard Bashman @howappealing)
#AppellateTwitter Weighs in on Golden Rules of Legal Writing
Joe Fore (@Joe_Fore), Co-Director of the UVALaw legal writing program, asked for #AppellateTwitter's help this week in boiling down legal writing into aa few golden rules – broad take-homes – for his legal writing class. And #AppellateTwitter did not disappoint.
October 28, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Current Affairs, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, October 21, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
Here are a handful of tidbits on appellate practice from around the web this past week. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email firstname.lastname@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
Presidential Debate: SCOTUS as a Topic
The third and final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was this week, hosted by Chris Wallace. And SCOTUS was a topic.
Law.com ran a story early in the week, in which it reported on the results of efforts by Law.com reporters to reach out to Supreme Court practitioners and other lawyers about what the candidates should be asked about SCOTUS. The ARTICLE highlighted some of the responses.
Law.com followed up after the debate with a review of how the topic was actually handled. Although SCOTUS was scheduled as one of six, 15-minute topics for the debate, moderator Chris Wallace struggled to get the candidates to provide much in-depth discussion about where the Court might go in the next several years and how they viewed the Constitution. Clinton emphasized that she hopes to see the Court "not reverse marriage equality, not reverse Roe v. Wade, and . . . stand up against Citizens United." Clinton also urged Congress to go forward with the process of considering Merrick Garland's nomination to the Court. Trump's vision for the Court included observations that "[t]he justices [he's] going to appoint will be pro-life, they will have a conservative bent, they will be protecting the Second Amendment . . . [and] will interpret the Constitution the way the Founders wanted it."
More on the intersection of the election and SCOTUS and the future of the Court can be found in this week's Thursday Round-Up at SCOTUSblog.
Follow-Up on Donald Trump vs. The New York Times
Last week's Weekly Roundup included the "disagreement" between Donald Trump and the NYT concerning the Times article about women accusing Trump of inappropriate behavior. The letters exchanged between Trump's lawyer and the Times' lawyer went viral
This week, the author of the Times response to Trump, David McCraw, penned a piece for Times Insider, in which he described his reactions to the response letter going viral. See: "I Hardly Expected My Letter to Donald Trump to Go Viral." McCraw notes that he wrote the response letter "in about 45 minutes . . . between a meeting on the company's emergency operations plan and a conference call about a new patent suit." After that, McCraw and three colleagues from the Legal Department spent "about 30 minutes, talking about whether the overall point and tone were right, whether words should be tweaked, whether the ending was right." McCraw notes that when he was ready to publish the letter, he jokingly told his legal department colleagues to "[s]tand by [their] Twitter accounts." Then the letter went viral.
McCraw took note of the Internet debate over things like his comma usage and whether there should be one or two spaces after a period. he received hundreds of emails in response to the letter, mostly from strangers but also from former students, colleagues, and law school classmates. He noted that his intent was not to get into politics, but to focus on the basics of press freedom, in a way merited in many cases removed from the spotlight of Donald Trump. But he also heard from a number of women who felt his letter was also speaking on their behalf, standing up for the women who had come forward to make the accusations against Trump.
According to McCraw, his "favorite email was the one that ended: 'As my sister put it, I've never wanted to hang a paragraph from a lawyer on my fridge before.'"
Washington University Law's Supreme Court Database
First Mondays (@FirstMondaysFM), a seasonal podcast on the Supreme Court, hosted by Ian Samuel (@isamuel) of Harvard Law School and Dan Epps (@danepps) of Washington University St. Louis Law, discussed this resource from Washington University Law in this week's podcast.
The Supreme Court Database is described on Washington University Law's website as "the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court." It "contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2015 terms."
Put a couple of logs in the fireplace, make some hot cocoa, and settle in for a fall weekend of browsing this resource if you are a fan or follower of SCOTUS. There's just so much great information there.
Hat Tip: Bob Loeb (@BobLoeb).
On the Lighter Side
Jason Steed (@5thCircAppeals) rejoiced this week at discovering a California appellate court published an opinion using Century Schoolbook font. See SoCal Appellate News Blog.
October 21, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, September 30, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
Here are a handful of tidbits on appellate practice from around the web this past week. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email firstname.lastname@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
Upcoming SCOTUS Term
SCOTUS kicks off its new term on the first Monday in October. As a result, the week before usually results in quite a bit of chatter, speculation, and discussion about the coming term and what can be expected. Here are a few tidbits in that regard:
SCOTUS Order List:
On Thursday, SCOTUS released an Order List adding eight cases to its new term, to start next week. SCOTUSblog provided a good / quick writeup about the list and a little preview of each case.
Order List:
SCOTUSblog Article: http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/09/justices-add-eight-new-cases-to-docket-for-upcoming-term/
SCOTUS 2016 Term: By the Numbers
Bloomberg broke down the upcoming term "by the numbers" -- including how many cases had been docketed at the beginning of the week (out of the 75 or so likely to make up the full docket for the year), the number being heard on direct appeal vs. discretionary grants of cert, original jurisdiction, etc. The article also breaks down civil vs. Criminal cases on the docket, the possibility of the 9th Circuit becoming the most reversed court for this term, etc.
Article: http://www.bna.com/scotus-2016-termby-n57982077532/
5 Facts about the Supreme Court
Pew Research Center summarized five facts about how Americans view SCOTUS as this year's term looms on the horizon. Americans' opinions of the Court hit a 30-year low last year, but have rebounded; there is a significant partisan gap in views of the Court; those partisan views include sharp divisions about how the Court should interpret the Constitution; voters closer to the conservative end of the Republican spectrum or the liberal end of the Democratic spectrum (as opposed to moderates) view court appointments as more important to their vote in the upcoming presidential election; and most Americans disagree with the current Senate's decision not to hold hearings on the nomination of Merrick Garland. See the article for more in-depth explanation of these five points.
Article: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/26/5-facts-about-the-supreme-court/
Hat Tip: Robert Barnes (@scotusreporter)
How Clinton's or Trump's Nominees Could Affect the Balance of the Supreme Court
Adam Liptak and Alicia Parlapiano had an article in the NY Times that provided an interactive guide and links to a new study prepared by Lee Epstein of Washington University in St. Louis, Andrew D. Martin of the University of Michigan, and Kevin Quinn of the University of California-Berkeley, discussing predictions about each candidate's potential nominees.
Article: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/25/us/politics/how-clintons-or-trumps-nominees-could-affect-the-balance-of-the-supreme-court.html?_r=0
Hat Tip: Howard Bashman (@howappealing)
#TwitterTuesdays Here
This week's edition of #TwitterTuesdays here at the Appellate Advocacy Blog focused on Supreme Court related Twitter accounts to keep you informed about all thing SCOTUS.
Link: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/appellate_advocacy/2016/09/twittertuesday-scotus-edition.html
Judge Clears Path for PACER Overcharge Suit
An article on Law.com this week highlighted that a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge has denied the government's request to dismiss a class action suit alleging that a computer glitch caused the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system to erroneously overcharge users for accessing and viewing federal court docket information. The basis for the government's claim was an assertion that the plaintiffs in the suit were required to exhaust administrative remedies before pursuing the action in court; the judge disagreed. The underlying action is based on "claims for breach of contract, breach of an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and illegal exaction."
Article: http://www.law.com/sites/almstaff/2016/09/26/judge-clears-path-for-pacer-overcharge-suit/?cmp=share_twitter&slreturn=20160827104313
Hat Tip: Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) and Jason P. Steed (@5thCircAppeals)
September 30, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Appellate Procedure, Current Affairs, Federal Appeals Courts, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, September 23, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
Here are a handful of tidbits on appellate practice from around the web this past week. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email at firstname.lastname@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
Will the Supreme Court's Vacancy Issues Ever Become an Election Issue?
Chris Geidner had an article on BuzzFeed News this week asking the question. The article recounted how, for a brief moment last weekend, it appeared as if the topic of the vacancy on the Supreme Court and Congress's decision not to consider and vote on President Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy would became a real issue in this year's Presidential election. Hillary Clinton was asked a question about it; a member of Donald Trump's campaign allegedly had been told that he would be a nominee in a Trump administration; Senator John Cornyn (chair of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution) spoke about hopes of confirmation for a set of lower court nominees back by Republican senators. But the focus quickly shifted away, again. Nonetheless, as the article notes, there are still some key dates coming up that might shift focus back to this topic as a key in the race for the White House, including the Court's new term opening in October, as well as upcoming debates.
Link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/the-supreme-court-almost-became-an-issue?utm_term=.ng7AOelBk#.vm7vjmoN1
Related, Jason P. Steed (@5thCircAppeals) tweeted a link to his April blog post about "Duty" and the Constitution, discussing the debate over whether the Constitution imposes a "duty" on Congress to consider and vote on a nominee to fill a vacant seat on the Court. The post raises some great discussion points about the intersection between whether the Constitution specifically imposes such a duty and whether it's acceptable to conclude that it does not if that conclusion arguably threatens the very function of the Constitution itself.
Blog Post: https://formalegalis.org/2016/04/18/duty-and-the-constitution/
Twitter Post: https://twitter.com/5thCircAppeals/status/778269922430365696
Finally, Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf had a post on Justia.com titled, "The Future of the Supreme Court, Regardless of Who Wins the Election." In the piece, he makes the case that although "it is tempting for those of us who follow the work of the high Court to play a waiting game" and acknowledges that "with respect to some important issues, uncertainty . . . warrants caution" he also argues that "Supreme Court watchers who are fearful about the outcome of the 2016 election can take comfort from the fact that it may not matter as much as we expect." He argues that there are "vast swaths of our public life about which the Court has almost nothing to say" and that "[s]ome areas of Supreme Court jurisprudence will likely be unaffected by the next appointment(s) because they rest on broad cross-ideological consensus." While acknowledging that "who appoints the next several justices to the Supreme Court is [not] an unimportant question" he argues that we should not think "that everything is up for grabs" because, at the end of the day, "the Court still decides many more cases unanimously than by a single vote" and also points out that history should tell us that "[e]ven when we know who will apoint justices . . . [and] even when we know who those justices are," their ultimate voting habits with the Court are often unexpected.
Justia article: https://verdict.justia.com/2016/09/21/future-supreme-court-regardless-wins-election
Dorf on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dorfonlaw
Oral Argument Preparation Thoughts
Bryan Gividen (@BryanGivi) started a good twitter discussion about oral argument preparation process and tips. David Feder (@davidjfeder) had previously posted an image showing the Solicitor General's process for oral argument prep in cases before SCOTUS. The comments and responses to both provide some great practical thoughts from folks who regularly engage in oral argument preparation.
Gividen Twitter Discussion Link: https://twitter.com/BryanGivi/status/777896705161170944
David Feder Twitter Post: https://twitter.com/davidjfeder/status/777650613114974208
How Many Issues to Raise on Appeal
Mike Skotnicki (@MSkotnicki) tweeted a link to a 2014 blog post he wrote about determining how many issues to raise on appeal. In the post, he discusses striking the balance between raising every issue that you can possibly find and only raising one or two really good arguments, arguing in favor of raising "every argument deemed to have real potential to be found meritorious" and capable of passing the "'red face test' (would you blush raising the argument during questioning at oral argument?)"
Blog Post: https://brieflywriting.com/2014/04/03/so-how-many-issues-do-you-raise-on-appeal/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSkotnicki/status/778284106920693760
September 23, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Appellate Procedure, Federal Appeals Courts, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, September 16, 2016
Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
This is the first edition of a new regular feature here at the Appellate Advocacy Blog: The Weekly Roundup. Each Friday, we'll post links to some of the best appellate practice content that we've come across in the past week. If you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send Dan a quick email at email@example.com or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
How Not to Argue About Extrinsic Evidence
600 Camp – a blog about commercial litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – had a brief post on September 12 about the Fifth Circuit's unpublished opinion in SmithGroup JJR, PLLC v. Forrest General Hospital. The brief opinion addressed the importance of preserving at the trial level arguments to be raised on appellate review. The particular issue at hand involved the admission and use of extrinsic evidence in the interpretation of a contract.
Blog Post: 600 Camp Blog Post
Fifth Circuit Opinion: SmithGroup v. Forrest General Hospital Opinion
Hat Tip: @David Coale
The 5 Edits I Make Most Frequently
Mark Herrmann, formerly a partner at a leading international law firm and now responsible for litigation and employment matters at a large international company, authored a post at Above the Law this week recounting common editing moves in the writing of briefs. There is a wealth of good advice there, based on real experience.
Blog Post: Above the Law Blog Post
Hat Tip: Raymond P. Ward
A Worthwhile, Four-Day Appellate CLE Is Coming to Philadelphia
Howard Bashman (featured in this week's "Twitter Tuesday" has written a great post discussing the annual Appellate Judges Education Institute Summit, an annual four-day program hosted by the judicial division of the ABA and the Southern Methodist Dedman School of Law. In a lot of ways it is like a big CLE over several days, featuring a large group of judges and appellate practitioners. This year's event is being held in Philadelphia in November. If it fits your schedule, it's a highly beneficial event to attend and participate in.
Blog Post: Bashman Blog Post
Hat Tip: @howappealing
Combination of Clement/Bancroft firm with Kirkland & Ellis
A big news item this week concerns the breaking news that Paul Clement and the Bancroft firm are going to combine with Kirkland & Ellis. This news was reported and discussed in a variety of places, including an article in the National Law Journal, where another prominent SCOTUS bar practitioner was quoted as calling it "the biggest shake-up in the Supreme Court bar since [Clement] left King & Spalding in 2011."
Article: National Law Journal Article
Hat Tip: @tessadysart
Twitter Thread About Getting Into Appellate Practice
Jason Steed, who was recently mentioned in our Twitter Tuesday feature and who is an appellate practitioner who blogs and tweets about appellate practice (especially in the 5th Circuit), started a twitter thread and discussion about getting into appellate practice that has some great discussion and thoughts. You can follow Jason's other posts about appellate practice at @5thCircAppeals.
Link: Jason Steed Twitter Thread
September 16, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Current Affairs, Legal Writing, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, August 26, 2016
To Swear or Not to Swear, that is the Question....
Should judges and lawyers quote profanity in their opinions, briefs, and oral arguments? Zoe Tillman tackled this touchy issue in a recent article on Law.com. The article, aptly entitled "In Quoting Profanity, Some Judges Give a F#%&. Others Don't," Tillman includes several quotes from federal judges on the use of profanity in judicial opinions. Well some try to avoid it at all costs, others don't mind including it, especially if it is relevant to the case.
Tillman notes:
Profanity has become increasingly prolific in court opinions. Since 2006, the word "fuck" was quoted in approximately 445 federal appeals court opinions, according to a search of court records. That's nearly as many as the preceding four decades combined.
While judges may have the freedom to quote profanity in an opinion, what should an attorney do in writing a brief or in oral argument? With respect to oral argument, one option is to call the court in advance and notify the court that you plan on using profanity. According to First Circuit Judge Bruce Selya, who was interviewed for the article, his court always gives permission when attorneys ask.
With respect to briefs, I think that calling the court to ask how these issues have been handled in the past is always a good option. It also doesn't hurt to do your homework and know the tenure of the court that you will appear before. Finally, ask yourself if it is truly relevant to use the profanity in the brief.
Apparently the Washington Redskins included a fair amount of profanity in their brief to the Fourth Circuit over the team's trademark. According to a post on the Business Law Basics blog,
In support of the latter argument [that the Patent & Trademark Office arbitrarily enforces offensive trademarks], the team provides extensive lists of wildly offensive trademarks that the PTO has issued. Certainly many of the issued trademarks mentioned in the brief are so salacious, crass, sexist and/or racist that we hesitate, on this family-friendly blog, to list them here. Indeed, this opening brief is notable in being one of the most [not inappropriately] profanity-laden court filings we have ever seen, and is worth a look for that reason alone.
August 26, 2016 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Federal Appeals Courts, Legal Writing, Oral Argument | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Advice on Writing Briefs from Judges Kozinski and Kopf
In a recent episode of the Legal Talk Network podcast Lawyer 2 Lawyer, hosts J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi interviewed Judge Alex Kozinski from the United States Court of Appeals for The Ninth Circuit and Judge Richard Kopf from the U.S. District Court, District of Nebraska, to get the judges' thoughts on the essential elements that go into persuasive legal writing.
If you have about half an hour, you should listen to the whole interview, available HERE via Soundcloud. If you don't have time to listen to the whole interview, or in the meantime, here are a few of the highlights:
One interesting perspective about the quality of brief-writing that the court comes from Judge Kozinski's recognition at roughly the 6:30 mark of the interview, where he noted that the court realizes that lawyers are busy. Judge Kozinski noted that the court recognizes that staffing and economic factors certainly play a role in the quality of the briefs submitted by attorneys, and that quality is not solely a function of the lawyers' abilities. He noted, for example, that staffing plays a role; larger firms with larger clients with larger budgets can devote more resources, including reviewers and editors, to fine tuning and polishing briefs than a solo practitioner representing an individual without deep pockets. He noted that sometimes the quality of briefs submitted to the court are not necessarily representative of failings of the individual lawyers, but are a matter of economic feasibility. Courts recognize that, and courts have their own staff to work on the case and provide additional assistance to the court in reaching the correct result.
At roughly 5:30 into the interview, Judge Kopf advises that attorneys writing briefs try to emulate what one might read in a "really well-written newspaper." He identifies the three key attributes of effective brief-writing as that it be simple, precise, and readable.
Simplicity is really important to Judge Kopf and, in my experience, most judges. They are busy and are always trying to focus in on the essential aspects of the case to reach a timely and accurate resolution, usually in the most direct way possible. Judge Kopf explains starting at roughly the 11:00 mark of the interview that a litigant who spends a little time narrowing in and simplifying the issue right at the outset of a brief does the court a significant favor. He compares an example wherein a litigant starts a brief by noting that it is in support of "a motion for summary judgment" with one noting that it is in support of "a motion for summary judgment, limited to the issue of qualified immunity." Simplifying and narrowing the focus at the outset helps the court to understand immediately where the rest of the discussion is going to go.
In cases involving complex technical issues or areas of the law, simplicity obviously becomes all the more important. In class, I always stress to my students the importance of explaining the issues, the law, and the facts in the simplest and most straightforward way possible. I always tell my students that there is little risk of offending any judge by making something seem "too simple," but there is great risk of a judge not fully understanding technical issues that are not simplified and explained. Judge Kopf echoes this thought at roughly the 30:15 mark of the interview by noting that a litigant writing a brief should "not assume [the judge is] smart." Judge Kopf advises at roughly the 29:25 mark of the interview that a litigant writing a brief addressing a technical issue have "a real human being" read the brief before it is submitted – someone with no background in that technical area. If that person cannot understand it, the writer needs to reevaluate.
The advice of seeking review by a reader who is not technically trained in the particular subject matter of the brief was also echoed by Judge Kozinski in his final thoughts, at roughly the 31:20 mark of the interview. Judge Kozinski urged writers to ask themselves if they could explain the arguments presented in their briefs to an educated, smart person who is not an expert, in plain language. If not, the writer needs to go back and rethink the argument and rethink how to present it. As Judge Kozinski put it, "writing is thinking."
November 10, 2015 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Legal Profession, Legal Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, October 15, 2015
A Handful of Links to Tips and Thoughts on Appellate Brief Writing
With the Supreme Court's new term now underway, there is likely to soon be much to discuss in the world of appellate advocacy and developments from cases heard by the Court. In the interim, I thought I'd share a handful of links for those who are in practice or in law school settings, working on drafting an appellate brief, and looking for some little tidbits concerning ways to maximize effectiveness. The following links cover a wide range of brief-writing topics and perusing them might offer some new thoughts or perspectives to increase your overall impact.
Overview of Each Section:
The Duke Law School has a helpful guide to appellate advocacy on its website that includes a table of contents and then individual sections addressing various parts of an appellate brief, including the Question Presented, the Tables, the Statement of the Case, the Argument, and the Conclusion:
Finding Your Appellate Voice:
Noted appellate advocacy blogger Howard Bashman of How Appealing presented "Finding the Appellate Style and Voice That Works Best for You" back in September at The Legal Intelligencer:
Some Tips Regarding Your Statement of the Case / Fact Section:
Stephen V. Armstrong (Director of career Development at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, an international firm based in Washington, D.C. and former Director of Professional Development and Training at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm based in New York City) and Timothy P. Terrell (Professor of Law at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and former Director of Professional Development a the law firm of King & Spaulding in Atlanta) present tips on "Organizing Facts to Tell Stories" in the Winter 2001 edition of Perspectives:
Armstrong & Terrell on Organizing Facts
Palmer Gene Vance II and Madonna E. Schueler (both of the firm of Stoll Keenon Ogden PLLC in Lexington, Kentucky) present "Ten Tips for Developing Your Case Theme" in the September/October edition of GPSolo, a publication of the American Bar Association:
Vance II and Schueler on Case Theme
Standard of Review:
Mike Skotnicki, an appellate attorney in Alabama, presented "The Standard of Review is the Lens Through Which You View Your Facts and Issues" on his appellate practice blog, Briefly Writing, back in January 2012:
Briefly Writing: Standard of Review
Point Headings:
Bryan Garner discussed the value of effective point headings in the September edition of Bryan Garner on Words at the ABA Journal:
Paragraph and Sentence Structure:
Mike Skotnicki presented "Borrowing a Fiction Writing Technique: Using Pacing by Paragraph and Sentence Length to Build to a Conclusion" on his appellate practice blog, Briefly Writing, back in March 2012:
Briefly Writing: Pacing by Paragraph and Sentence
Raymond Ward, an appellate lawyer in New Orleans, linked to articles by Stephen V. Armstrong and Timothy P. Terrell from recent issues of Perspectives, concerning "Lessons in Paragraph Building" on his blog, the (new) legal writer:
Ward: Armstrong and Terrell on Paragraph Building
Editing to Meet Page Limits:
Lady (Legal) Writer presented a blog entry in September about "Editing to Meet Page Limits":
Lady (Legal) Writer on Editing to Meet Page Limits
If you have links to articles, blog posts, or other resources that you've found to be useful with tips and thoughts on ways to improve appellate brief writing, share them in the comments!
October 15, 2015 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Legal Writing | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Proposed Maryland Rule Heads Wrong Way on Unpublished Opinions
As Michael Wein of the Maryland Appellate Blog reports in some detail, the Maryland Rules Committee has responded to increased media publication of its "unreported decisions" by proposing to: 1) have the court publish the opinions itself and 2) deny the opinions not only precedential authority but also persuasive authority. Further, any attempt to cite an unreported decision may be met with a sanction of striking an entire brief or filing. The rule, as written, would apply also to other jurisdictions' decisions, leading Michael Wein to incisively ask, "So a case can be citable as full precedential or persuasive authority in another state or federal court, yet, when it hits the Maryland border, it suddenly ceases to exist?"
The rule would put Maryland rules at odds with the federal Fourth Circuit practice, which not only permits citation to its unpublished opinions but acknowledges that a such an opinion might have precedential value. The rule would also put Maryland at odds with the trend in state and federal courts toward greater publication, citation, and acceptance of the precedential value of unpublished opinions.
Enacting or maintaining a citation ban that attempts to deny even persuasive value of an appellate opinion ignores the shared experience and reasoning that led to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1, which prospectively permits citation to all opinions, however designated, in the federal circuits. When attorneys in your state are telling you that they want to read these opinions to the extent that someone seeks them out and bears the costs of publication, it should be a signal that these opinions do have value for predicting the outcomes of future litigation and the reasoning that was once persuasive on the court will likely be so again. Unless it thinks members of the Maryland Bar are seeking out these opinions to supplement their leisure reading, the Maryland Rules Committee should recognize that no matter how the court labels them, appellate opinions have have a predictive and persuasive value.
April 14, 2015 in Appellate Court Reform, Appellate Practice, Appellate Procedure, Federal Appeals Courts, State Appeals Courts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 2, 2015
CA3blog on the Third Circuit's Low Published Opinion Rate
Matthew Stiegler's CA3blog dug into the new AO Court Statistics and found that when it comes to issuing published opinions, the Third Circuit doesn't publish very many of them. It publishes the fewest published opinions of any circuit, and finds itself among the high-volume circuits in terms of the percentage of unpublished opinions. Matthew suggests that judicial vacancy is the the likely reason for the Third Circuit's recent spike in its unpublished opinion rate to 92.3%. That seems accurate, though the Third has been hovering in the high-80s for a while now. Judicial vacancy may have pushed them up to the low-90s where the high-volume circuits are.
I hope that Matthew and others watching their particular circuits of interest continue to report on those courts' publication practices. Seven circuits now publish fewer than ten percent of their opinions.
April 2, 2015 in Appellate Court Reform, Appellate Practice, Federal Appeals Courts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, March 19, 2015
WSJ on Federal Word Count Proposal Debate
The federal appellate courts are currently considering a change to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32(a)(7)(B) that would reduce the word-limit of principal appellate briefs from 14,000 to 12,500. Law blogs, especially those of an appellate bent, have reported on this as comments rolled in over the last several weeks. This blog is far behind on mentioning it, and even now, I don't have a strong opinion on the proposal. But it seemed worth mentioning that the issue has reached the general public in the form of a Wall Street Journal article.
Oddly, what stood out to me in this article was this bit:
Michael Gans, clerk of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, who oversaw the word-count study, says the process couldn't have been more painstaking. It was carried out by a high-school graduate who interned at his office and spent a recent summer in a cubicle counting every single word of 200 printed-out briefs that served as the sample. "I felt sorry for her, but that's what she did all summer," Mr. Gans said. "She still wants to go to law school."
Perhaps optical character recognition software could have been used?
hat tip to reader: Professor Jennifer Romig
March 19, 2015 in Appellate Court Reform, Appellate Practice, Appellate Procedure, Federal Appeals Courts, Legal Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
The Harms of Issuing Non-Precedential Opinions
In a post last Monday on Prawfsblawg, entitled, On Not Creating Precedent in Plumley v. Austin, Richard M. Re asks, "what's so wrong with deliberately declining to create precedent?" By his answer, an implied "nothing" because "[d]oing so conserves scarce resources and reduces the risk of mistaken or sloppy precedent," he seems to be asking, "what's the harm?"
There are a couple other bases for finding the practice "wrong," such as whether the practice is legitimate, constitutional, or just. But first, what's the harm in treating some circuit decisions as non-precedential? This is something I discuss in my works on the topic, especially: Overturning the Last Stone: The Final Step in Returning Precedential Status to All Opinions, 10 J. App. Prac. & Process 61 (2009) and Draining the Morass: Ending the Jurisprudentially Unsound Unpublication System, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 685 (2009).
First, deliberately declining to create precedent creates fewer precedents. Fewer precedents means a less definite law. At least since the time of Lord Coke, the law has been viewed as refined by renewed applications. With each new decision, the law is broadened, narrowed, or simply reaffirmed. The common law treats each case as binding but is also concerned about the accrual of such cases and the varying facts to which the rule is applied. This the understanding of precedent of Coke, Blackstone, Kent, Marshall, Story, and Llewellyn. It's how the common law, in principle, works. Never before in common law history has a court been able, at the time of decision, to remove its holding from the body of precedent. And no matter how the court phrases its opinion, it has ultimately been up to the later court to decide whether and how earlier opinions applied.
I am partial to Karl Llewellyn's explanation: "We have discovered that rules alone, mere forms of words, are worthless. We have learned that the concrete instance, the heaping of concrete instances, the present, vital memory of a multitude of concrete instances, is necessary in order to make any general proposition, be it rule of law or any other, mean anything at all." Karl Llewellyn, The Bramble Bush, 66-69 (1930).
The problem is not that there are too many precedents but that there are too few. Judge Posner wrote as much in The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform, and his experience is echoed in the experiences of the federal judiciary. In a 1998 survey of federal district judges, about a third identified some area of circuit law as inconsistent or difficult to know on account of lack of binding circuit decisions on point. But even more telling than what judges say is what they do. The survey also revealed that nearly two-thirds of lawyers surveyed reviewed unpublishd opinions either generally within their practice area or in researching specific cases. During the citation ban era (1974-2006), courts and litigants frequently cited to unpublished and allegedly non-precedential opinions even in violation of the ban. They were, as Lord Coke might have described it, looking for greater refinement in the law that only comes by seeing it applied. Or as Llewellyn might have said, they saw the published, precedential grains of sand, but they wanted to see the heaps. The citation ban finally ended because it ran counter to a basic understanding of precedent shared by American lawyers and judges alike: each case has value in determining the scope of the law.
More applications of the principles of law to facts, such that those principles are tested and refined, improves our understanding of those principles and gives greater certainty to those seeking to conform their conduct to them. "Mistaken or sloppy precedent" can be corrected by more judicial oversight to their drafting, or should that fail, by the normal processes of the court. While conserving limited resources is important, expediency should not be our highest value. The federal judiciary, a co-equal third branch of our government is allocated a mere two-tenths of one percent of the total federal expenditures. Instead of asking our courts to do with less, we should give them the funds to do more.
Second, issuing some decisions as non-precedential creates the potential for blatantly conflicting published and unpublished opinions. A court may decide in favor of a party today but next year, on the exact same issue, decide exactly the opposite. If the earlier decision is unpublished, the later panel need not acknowledge the earlier decision or give a reason for the change. This was the case in a pair of cases in which the Dallas Area Rapid Transit authority ("DART") received diametrically opposed decisions from the Fifth Circuit without explanation in a span of just three years. In 1999, a federal district court in the Fifth Circuit held that, "DART is a political subdivision of the state of Texas, and is therefore immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment," which the Fifth Circuit affirmed without comment in an unpublished opinion. Anderson v. Dallas Area Rapid Transit, No. CA3:97-CV-1834-BC, 1998 U.S. App. LEXIS, 15493 (N.D. Tex. Sept. 29, 1998) aff'd Anderson v. Dallas Area Rapid Transit, 180 F.3d 265, (5th Cir. 1999) (per curiam) (unpublished), cert. denied 529 U.S. 1062 (1999).
In Anderson, and two other unpublished opinions, the Fifth Circuit held that DART was a governmental unit or instrumentality of the State of Texas entitled to qualified immunity. The law on this point seemed so clear that in Williams v. DART, the district court felt this point was "firmly established." The Fifth Circuit disagreed and rejected DART's immunity claim dismissing the unpublished opinions as "neither binding nor persuasive," but failing to give any reason for the different treatment. Williams v. Dallas Area Rapid Transit, 256 F.3d 260, 261 (5th Cir. (Tex.) 2001). This decision drew a strong dissent noting that this kind of unreasoned about-face exposed a flaw in the concept of non-precedential opinions.
A conflict like this between two precedential opinions would be resolved by the second panel distinguishing the present matter from the prior one, or if that proved impossible, by an open declaration of conflict followed by a resolution by the court en banc. Which leads to a third category of harm non-precedential opinions cause.
Third, issuing some decisions as non-precedential increases the likelihood of intra-circuit conflict. Such conflict was especially acute in the citation ban era, because a litigant perceiving a conflict in a circuit's unpublished opinions was prohibited by rule from raising it with the court. For example, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 118 S. Ct. 1219 (1998), an ambiguity arose about how to treat a defendant convicted of illegal entry following deportation. Over a two-and-a-half-year period, twenty Ninth Circuit panels ruled on this issue and split three different ways (most remanding for resentencing, some remanding for amendment of the original judgment, and a few foisting the responsibility for determining the proper course of action on the district court). The split continued for over two years, with identically situated defendants receiving different answers from the Circuit. The ongoing intra-circuit conflict was revealed only when a panel in United States v. Rivera-Sanchez, 222 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir. 2000) ordered a litigant to violate the Circuit's non-citation rule and provide a list of these unpublished opinions.
A circuit that does not view its unpublished opinions as binding can simply ignore those decisions for purposes of whether to hear an issue en banc. Yet, the unpublished opinion may be cited for persuasive effect (in all circuits since 2007), which merely increases the chance of creating the separate, conflicting lines of authority as in the Riveria-Sanchez scenario.
Fourth, inter-circuit conflict become more likely, too. In much the same way that intra-circuit conflict can arise undetected or unacknowledged within a circuit, such conflicts can arise between circuits. During the citation ban era, such conflicts were effectively hidden, because citation bans prevented their being raised. But even now, if the unpublished opinion is not treated as establishing the law of the circuit, it can be disregarded within its own circuit and by the other circuits. The Supreme Court takes only a tiny fraction of the cases seeking review each year. Just as with en banc panels, a case that does not establish the law of the circuit is unlikely to be the basis of an apparent conflict even if the conflict it creates is real. In that way, a conflict can exist indefinitely in a manner much like that described in Rivera-Sanchez.
Fifth, declaring some opinions non-precedential allows them to evade Supreme Court Review. As noted above, one line of authority, if present only in unpublished opinions can obscure or deemphasize the nature of the conflict. Two Justices believed that was the case in Waller v. U.S., where Justices White and O'Connor dissented from denial of cert noting that a circuit split existed if one took into account unpublished opinions. 504 U.S. 962, 964-65, 112 S. Ct. 2321 (1992) (White J. and O'Connor J., dissenting) (Mem); see also Hyman v. Rickman, 446 U.S. 989, 990-92 (1980) (Blackmun, Brennan, and Marshall, J., dissenting) (Mem) (dissenting from denial of certiorari on the grounds that the unpublished circuit opinion was in conflict with other circuits on the issue of right to appointed counsel). While the conflict was sufficient to catch individual Justices' attention, it was not sufficient to prompt Supreme Court review, similar to the result in Plumley v. Austin.
Supreme Court review is also less likely due to the signal an unpublished opinion sends. A circuit's decision not to publish a given decision signals that that decision is routine, even when it is not. For example in United States v. Edge Broad. Co., the Fourth Circuit declared a federal statute limiting lottery advertising unconstitutional in an unpublished opinion. 956 F.2d 263 (per curiam) (4th Cir. 1993). In its reversal of that decision, the Supreme Court expressed surprise and dismay that the Circuit Court could perceive such a ruling as unworthy of publication. 509 U.S. 418, 425 n.3 (1993) ("We deem it remarkable and unusual that although the Court of Appeals affirmed a judgment that an Act of Congress was unconstitutional as applied, the court found it appropriate to announce its judgment in an unpublished per curiam opinion.")
The hiding of cases from Supreme Court review also occurs because unpublished cases tend to create a less thorough record, which itself discourages Supreme Court review. For example, in County of Los Angeles v. Kling, the Supreme Court granted cert and issued a summary reversal on a case the Ninth Circuit had decided in a brief, unpublished, non-citeable opinion. 474 U.S. 936, 937-39 (1985). Justice Marshall dissented calling the Ninth Circuit's practice "plainly wrong" and noting, "the Court of Appeals would have been well advised to discuss the record in greater depth. One reason it failed to do so is that the members of the panel decided that the issues presented by this case did not warrant discussion in a published opinion that could be 'cited to or by the courts of this circuit, save as provided by Rule 21(c).' That decision not to publish the opinion or permit it to be cited-like the decision to promulgate a rule spawning a body of secret law-was plainly wrong."
Justice Marshall continued by chastising the Court for engaging in the same type of shortcut decision making: "The brevity of analysis in the Court of Appeals' unpublished, noncitable opinion, however, does not justify the Court's summary reversal….For, like a court of appeals that issues an opinion that may not be printed or cited, this Court then engages in decision-making without the discipline and accountability that the preparation of opinions requires."
Even when both parties agree that a Circuit decision makes new law, the status of a decision as unpublished can discourage Supreme Court review. In Family Fare, Inc. v. NLRB, both parties agreed that the Sixth Circuit had departed from its previous law in an unpublished opinion. 2006 U.S. Briefs 1536 cert. denied Family Fare, Inc. v. NLRB, 127 S. Ct. 2991 (2007). NLRB liked the change and sought publication or a Supreme Court affirmance to solidify the new interpretation. Family Fare disliked the change and viewed it as exactly the kind of surreptitious change in the law of the circuit that Justice Thomas alludes to in Plumley. Ultimately, The Supreme Court denied cert, probably in significant part because as an unpublished opinion, it was not the formally law of the circuit and did not truly represent a shift in the law. Yet, Family Fare was treated differently than prior litigants, and NLRB likely relied on the decision in future cases to show that the law had changed.
Sixth, creating an opinion on which no one can rely (and which for years no one could even cite) is an invitation to poor reasoning or even strategic, result-based reasoning. Justice Stevens expressed "that occasionally judges will use the unpublished opinion as a device to reach a decision that might be a little hard to justify." Jeffrey Cole & Elaine E. Bucko, A Life Well Lived: An Interview with Justice John Paul Stevens, 32 No. 3 Litigation 8, 67 (2006).
This concern was also expressed by the late-Judge Richard Arnold and quite directly by Judge Wald of the D.C. Circuit: "I have seen judges purposely compromise on an unpublished decision incorporating an agreed-upon result in order to avoid a time-consuming public debate about what law controls. I have even seen wily would be dissenters go along with a result they do not like so long as it is not elevated to a precedent." The Rhetoric of Results and the Results of Rhetoric: Judicial Writings, 62 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1371, 1374 (1995).
A study of asylum cases in one circuit and found considerable strategic decision making surrounding the outcomes of cases and the publication of opinions: "voting and publication are, for some judges, strategically intertwined: for example, judges may be prepared to acquiesce in decisions that run contrary to their own preferences, and to vote with the majority, as long as the decision remains unpublished, but can be driven to dissent if the majority insists upon publication" David S. Law, Strategic Judicial Lawmaking: Ideology, Publication, and Asylum Law in the Ninth Circuit, 73 U. Cinn. L. Rev. 117 (2005).
Finally, the system of unpublished, non-precedential opinions is harmful to both the courts and the litigants before them. It's harmful to the courts, which have been drawn into this very unjudicial exercise of prospectively dividing "worthy" cases from "unworthy" ones. For hundreds of years, a court was expected to abide by, or explain the difference from, a prior case, and a court knew that its decision created a similar obligation on later courts. Now, unmoored from that, they are engaged in a very different process. As the recent article by Adam Liptak suggests, the public concern with unpublished opinions is that a court can issue one-off rulings that it need not every follow again.
It also harms litigants, who look at prior adjudications in the form of unpublished opinions but have no assurance that they will be treated the same or that any explanation will be given for the difference. And often they are not. Individual litigants like those in the cases mentioned above and all the many similar cases they represent, have not been treated equitably or according the system most people believe exists.
But as noted at the outset of this post, these harms are the middle ground problems with non-precedential opinions. One could accept the practice in principle and have serious concerns with the manner in which it is carried out. Or, more deeply, it's fair to question what authority the federal circuits have for ex ante precedent-stripping and whether that practice is constitutional or just. But those will have to wait for other excessively long posts.
February 10, 2015 in Appellate Court Reform, Appellate Justice, Appellate Practice, Current Affairs, Federal Appeals Courts, Legal Profession, United States Supreme Court | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
NY Times on Unpublished Federal Court Decisions
Just a real quick tip that in yesterday's NY Times online, Adam Liptak penned a piece about the practice of the federal courts issuing unpublished decisions and what their effect is. In the piece, Liptak quotes the Appellate Advocacy Blog's own David Cleveland on the subject, a subject David has written extensively about. The piece touches on the recent Supreme Court opinion that David wrote about last week.
The link for Liptak's article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/us/justice-clarence-thomas-court-decisions-that-set-no-precedent.html?_r=0
February 3, 2015 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Court Reform, Appellate Practice, Appellate Procedure, Current Affairs, Federal Appeals Courts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Nebraska Supreme Court Procedural Ruling on Pipeline Case
The Nebraska Supreme Court recently issued an opinion concerning the Keystone XL oil pipeline proposed in 2008 by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P., to carry crude oil products from Canada to the Texas coastline. The opinion is not interesting because of any actual resolution of the highly charged political questions surrounding the pipeline. Rather, the opinion, found at https://supremecourt.nebraska.gov/sites/supremecourt.ne.gov/files/sc/opinions/s14-158.pdf, is interesting because of the highly unusual interplay between jurisdictional standing requirements and constitutional limitations on the authority of the Court to declare legislative action unconstitutional.
Background of the Lawsuit:
TransCanada's original proposal called for the pipeline to pass through Nebraska's Sandhills, which raised concerns about potential environmental damage. At least partly in response to those concerns, Nebraska's Governor in 2011 called a special session of the Nebraska Legislature to discuss enacting siting legislation to specify standards to govern eminent domain power for oil pipelines. The Nebraska Legislature responded in the special session by enacting legislative bills that amended existing Nebraska law regarding approval of proposed pipeline routes crossing Nebraska.
Without detailing all of the legislative procedural history, it suffices to note that the Nebraska Legislature eventually passed a legislative bill that allowed a pipeline carrier to seek approval of a proposed pipeline route from the Governor or to comply with other legislative provisions requiring approval through the Nebraska Public Service Commission. The legislation also included provisions appropriating funds from the state's general fund to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality to carry out various duties related to the approval process.
TransCanada eventually submitted for approval a proposed route for the pipeline that would have avoided the Nebraska Sandhills. TransCanada submitted its request through the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality and sought approval from the Nebraska Governor, rather than through the Nebraska Public Service Commission. In January 2013, the Nebraska Governor approved the proposed route.
In March 2013, a group of Nebraska landowners filed an operative complaint seeking a declaratory judgment that the legislative bill allowing the Governor, rather than the Nebraska Public Service Commission, to approve a proposed pipeline route was unconstitutional. The taxpayers alleged that the bill violated equal protection, due process, and separation of powers provisions of the Nebraska Constitution; unlawfully delegated to the Nebraska Governor powers exclusively belonging to the Nebraska Public Service Commission and/or to the Nebraska Legislature; and unlawfully allocated taxpayer money to implement unconstitutional laws. In response, the State alleged in part that the taxpayers lacked standing to bring the action.
The trial court concluded that the taxpayers bringing the action had failed to demonstrate that their property was located in the path of the proposed pipeline and that, accordingly, they had failed to establish traditional standing to bring the lawsuit. The court concluded, however, that they had established taxpayer standing and that the challenged legislation was unconstitutional. The State appealed the ruling to the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Nebraska Supreme Court's Decision:
The Nebraska Supreme Court's decision in this case did not ultimately resolve the question of whether the underlying legislative bill was constitutional. Rather, the Supreme Court's decision ended up turning on the result of an unusual interplay between state law requirements concerning the Supreme Court's ability to rule legislative action unconstitutional and determinations of standing. In essence, the Court was split on the matter of whether the taxpayers had standing to challenge the legislative bill's constitutionality and, although a majority of the court ruled that there was standing, the majority was not sufficient in number to rule on the constitutionality of the legislation. As a result, because a minority of the Court concluded that there was a lack of standing and refused to consider the constitutionality of the legislation, the Court was unable to issue a ruling one way or the other on the matter.
The first issue that the Nebraska Supreme Court had to resolve was the specific challenge to the taxpayers' standing to bring the suit in the first place. On that issue, a majority of the court concluded that the taxpayers had standing; a minority of three justices disagreed.
The second issue, then, to be addressed was the challenge to the constitutionality of the legislation. It is at that point that the Nebraska Supreme Court's opinion takes some unusual and interesting twists and turns.
Nebraska Constitution article V, section 2, provides in relevant part that "[a] majority of the members [of the Nebraska Supreme Court] sitting shall have authority to pronounce a decision except in cases involving the constitutionality of an act of the Legislature" and that "[n]o legislative act shall be held unconstitutional except by the concurrence of five judges."
The three justices who concluded that the taxpayers lacked standing concluded that their decision with respect to the standing issue prevented them from expressing an opinion, one way or the other, on the constitutionality claim. Their reading of the Nebraska Constitutional provision noted above was that it required at least five members of the Court to (1) conclude that the Court had jurisdiction to hear the case (including that the parties had standing to bring the case) and (2) determine on the merits that the legislative action is unconstitutional.
The four judges and justices who concluded that the taxpayers had standing concluded that the justices who disagreed were "out-voted" on the jurisdictional question of standing and could, as a result, express an opinion on the underlying substantive issue of the constitutionality of the legislation. The majority's reading of the Nebraska Constitutional provision noted above was that it required a supermajority only on the actual issue of constitutionality, not on the preceding issue of jurisdiction.
The unusual result is that, in this case, four members of the Court believed that the Court had jurisdiction to act and expressed an opinion that the underlying legislation was unconstitutional. The remaining three members did not suggest that the legislation was constitutional, but, rather, refused to express an opinion at all, believing that a supermajority was required to even have jurisdiction to consider the merits of the constitutional challenge. So, at the end of the day, three members of the Court concluding that there was a want of jurisdiction were able to preclude any substantive ruling on the merits of the action.
February 3, 2015 in Appellate Advocacy, Appellate Practice, Current Affairs, State Appeals Courts | Permalink | Comments (0)


text:
Visit Rachel at www.rachelallord.com!
I'm an adoptive mom, too! Writing fiction is a lot like acting, eh? What emotion have I had that could clue me in to what my character is feeling. Helps me think of writing as play, which always gives me a smile. Thanks!ReplyDelete
You're right- It is a lot like acting! Thanks for reading and commenting.Delete
Sounds like an interesting book! And yes--no matter how crazy or bad our main characters are, we have to give readers some SHARD to relate to. Even with Scarlett O'Hara, consummate bad mom and overall baddie, we feel for her on some deep level...we relate to her determination to survive, just another day. All the best to you!ReplyDelete
Yes, we can probably relate to Scarlett (and other baddies) because we all, if we're honest, have our own brand of "bad" and "crazy". Thanks for sharing.Delete
After pitching a book on personal finances and being shot down, mainly because I do not have the credentials. I know Dave Ramsey is successful, but I also know we started from the same point. My job used to take me through Nashville six days a week and I listened to him before he was big. The publisher told me to write what I know. Thanks for helping me see and understand what I know. I was going about it all wrong. Your post definitely helped me to get focused.ReplyDelete
Thank you for sharing that... so glad you found it to be helpful.Delete
This post could not have come at a better time. I've drifted away from my WIP because I couldn't get my protagonist to be compelling. He and I were almost legally separated! Time for some counseling....
Thank you!
I definitely sense a story there! Thanks for reading and commenting.ReplyDelete
I really enjoyed this! I definitely agree in writing what you know, then taking that and expounding on it... Thanks for sharing!ReplyDelete
Thanks, cjoy! Happy writing to you!ReplyDelete
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KUALA LUMPUR, March 28 (Reuters) - Malaysia's government is not sure if it can announce a partner for state carmaker Proton Holdings Bhd by its own end-March deadline, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Wednesday.
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