Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup May 26 2017
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 atDReal@Creighton.edu or a message on Twitter (@Daniel_L_Real).
Supreme Court Rulings:
Cooper v. Harris
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in this case challenging North Carolina’s congressional districts as having been drawn based on an unlawful reliance on race. Justice Kagan authored the opinion for the Court, joined by the more liberal Justices on the Court and by Justice Thomas.
TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC
The Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, reaffirmed a prior decision and held again that a domestic corporation resides only in its state of incorporation for purposes of venue in patent cases. As a result of a Federal Circuit decision in 1990, in which the court held that patent infringement venue was proper in any court having personal jurisdiction over the defendant, over the past two decades there has been a rise of patent-focused cases in venues such as the Eastern District of Texas. As a result of the TC Heartland decision, venue is restricted to where the defendant is incorporated or where the defendant has a regular and established place of business.
Immigration Cases
As this article from The Atlantic discusses, there are a number of important immigration cases that are awaiting rulings from the Supreme Court. The article notes that in the major cases, the Court seemed to lean toward favoring the arguments of the government during oral arguments, but the current political and world climate will make the eventual rulings very interesting.
Other Appellate Court Rulings:
On Thursday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a nationwide injunction that blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to temporarily halt immigration from six majority-Muslim countries. The ruling is the first appellate court ruling on the second executive order issued by President Trump on the subject. If the administration wants to seek it, the next step would be to petition the Supreme Court for review.
Practice Tips:
Related to the Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland, a good twitter thread this week touched on the importance of preserving even long-shot arguments, with the venue objection in patent cases in Texas as one example. HT: Sean Marotta.