Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, July 21, 2023
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.
US Supreme Court Opinions and News
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The Supreme Court has finished releasing opinions for the 2022-23 term and, as usual, there are a number of Supreme Court term wrap-ups and commentaries on the term: The Heritage Foundation’s Scholars and Scribes Review the Rulings, Adam Feldman’s Empirical SCOTUS, USAToday, NPR, and BloombergLaw.
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And looking forward, the Court released the October 2023 oral argument calendar. Here are a couple of places to find the cases (and some commentary) on the docket for 2023-24: Oyez.org, SCOTUSBlog, and BloombergLaw.
State Court Opinions and News
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The California Supreme Court rejected a 2022 Supreme Court ruling on a California Labor law. The Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) allows employees to sue employers, individually or collectively, in the name of the state. The Supreme Court held that PAGA violated the rights of businesses where the contract requires workers to submit to individual arbitration rather than filing suit. The California Supreme Court rejected that interpretation, stating “the highest court of each State … remains the final arbiter of what is state law.” The California Supreme Court ruled that, even though the Act may require workers to arbitrate their own claims, PAGA also allows workers to join co-workers to sue on behalf of the state. See ruling and a report from the San Francisco Chronicle.
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The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a law that eliminated cash bail, allowing a new system to begin. Illinois will become the first state in the U.S. to end cash bail for criminal defendants awaiting trial. Governor Pritzker supports the new law and the decision, saying ““We can now move forward with historic reform to ensure pretrial detainment is determined by the danger an individual poses to the community instead of by their ability to pay their way out of jail.” The challenge to the law argued that the changes were unconstitutional. But the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that “The Illinois Constitution of 1970 does not mandate that monetary bail is the only means to ensure criminal defendants appear for trials or the only means to protect the public. Our constitution creates a balance between the individual rights of defendants and the individual rights of crime victims.” See the order and reports from The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.