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Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup, Friday, January 18

By Danny C. Leavitt

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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 Dan Real a quick email at DReal@Creighton.edu or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).  You can also send emails to Danny Leavitt at Danny@tsalerno-law.com or a message on twitter @Danny_C_Leavitt. 

Supreme Court News:

  • Certiorari grants and oral arguments continued this week at the Supreme Court in several cases. Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle report about those cases. Two such grants went to Supreme Court advocate Neal Katyal and one to well-known #AppellateTwitter’s Raffi Melkonian (@RMFifthCircuit). You can read about those grants here.  Tony and Marcia also provide some details about the confirmation hearings for William Barr as U.S. attorney general. One of the cases argued this week includes Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Blair, “a constitutional hybrid of the Twenty-First Amendment, commerce clause and privileges and immunities clause, all bottled in a challenge to Tennessee’s residency requirements for retail liquor licenses.” Read about the arguments here.
  • On Monday, the Court turned away a suit brought by United States military troops injured by smoke from open-air pits used to burn waste in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Court was asked to revive the suit that was brought against defense contractors KBR Inc. and Halliburton Co. 
  • Adam Liptak (@adamliptak) tweeted about the “grammar of law” here, commenting on Justice Kagan’s question to Paul Clement during oral arguments in Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc.

Circuit Court News:

  • The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion affirming that Domino’s website and app are places of public accommodation subject to the ADA. The Court found that the ADA applies to services of a public accommodation, not services in a place of public accommodation. The opinion can be found here. Conversely, this article notes a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion addressing the complications of establishing standing in ADA website litigation. A circuit split may be on the horizon. 
  • Patricia Wald, the first woman to be appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and the first to serve as Chief Judge of that court, passed away on January 12, 2019. Linda Greenhouse has this piece on her, which, in part, describes her writing as a judge. 

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