Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, January 3, 2020
Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup 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 a quick note to either (1) Dan Real at DReal@Creighton.edu or on Twitter @Daniel_L_Real or (2) Catharine Du Bois at DuBoisLegalWriting@gmail.com or on Twitter @CLDLegalWriting.
Happy New Year! Wishing the readers of the Appellate Advocacy Blog (and everyone else!) a happy and healthy 2020!
Looking for what to watch in your practice area in 2020? On January 1, Law360’s Appellate News posted a series of what to watch in 2020 in various practice areas. Check it out on the Jan 1 postings here.
US Supreme Court Opinions and News:
- Chief Justice Robert’s 2019 Year-End report on the Federal Judiciary was published Tuesday. Find it here. In it, he calls on his judicial colleagues to “each resolve to do our best to maintain the public’s trust that we are faithfully discharging our solemn obligation to equal justice under law.”
- The Hill’s John Kruzel and Harper Neidig posted a report on the 2020 Supreme Court cases to watch. Find it here.
- The Supreme Court will hear arguments this year in a First Amendment free exercise of religion case concerning the use of public funds in religious schools. The appeal from Montana will ask the court to consider “whether states are free to erect a wall between church and state high enough to exclude religious groups from some state benefits.” See Adam Liptak’s report in the New York Times.
- Court will also hear a decades-long legal battle over water between Florida and Georgia. Listen to (or read the transcript of) the NPR report here.
Federal Appellate Court Opinions and News:
- The Second Circuit has raised privacy questions over the government’s warrantless searches of NSA surveillance data. Although recognizing that the gathering of data is lawful, the court questions the searching of that data, characterizing it as more like under a “general warrant.” The court wonders, “[i]f such a vast body of information is simply stored in a database, available for review … solely on the speculative possibility that evidence of interest to agents investigating a particular individual might be found there, the program begins to look more like a dragnet, and less like an individual officer going to the evidence locker to check out a previously-acquired piece of evidence against some newfound insight.” See order and reports from Reuters and Washington Post.
- The Appeals Court for the DC District upheld the designation of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, a national monument off the coast of New England. Fishing groups had objected to the monument because it restricted their fishing area. See ruling here and reports by Maine Public Radio and Cape Cod Times.
- The Second Circuit ordered resentencing for a “shockingly low” 17-year sentence for an ISIS supporter who attempted to kill an FBI agent. See reports from NYT, Washington Post, the AP, and Reuters.
- Finally, the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the label “diet” on a soft drink is not a promise to help you lose weight or keep it under control. The Court refused to allow fraud claims (by the same plaintiff) against both Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper. According to the Dr. Pepper decision, “[t]he prevalent understanding of the term in (the marketplace) is that the ‘diet’ version of a soft drink has fewer calories than its ‘regular’ counterpart.” However, “[j]ust because some consumers may unreasonably interpret the term differently does not render the use of ‘diet’ in a soda’s brand name false or deceptive,” the court ruled.
Other Appellate News
The NAAG announced the winners of Winners of 2019 Supreme Court Best Brief Awards. Check out the list here