Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup April 7 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).

Confirmation of Judge Gorsuch to SCOTUS

Items Related to Gosuch Confirmation Votes, Filibuster, Nuclear Option:

Washington Post evaluation of the votes as of Monday morning

Washington Post on Democrats securing votes to block nomination and setting up potential “nuclear option”

Reuters article: Democrats amass support needed to block confirmation vote with filibuster

Medium.com article on “The Strategic Case Against the Democratic Filibuster of Neil Gorsuch”

USN&WR article on “A Supreme Mistake in the Making” about how Republicans could harm the country and themselves by breaking the filibuster with the “nuclear option”

HowAppealing links to variety of articles and stories about Senate Republicans deploying the “nuclear option” to break the filibuster and clear the path for Gorsuch’s confirmation.

Items Related to Midweek Plagiarism Allegation:

Business Insider article about the allegations

Politico piece asserting that the evidence supports conclusions of plagiarism

Bloomberg piece asserting that the alleged plagiarism examples are embarrassing

 Not Directly About Gorsuch, But About Judicial Nominations, Vetting, and Confirmation

NY Times article about the White House ending the ABA’s role in vetting judges

Noteworthy Appellate Rulings

7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana:

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals became the first federal appeals court to rule in favor of protection for sexual orientation-based discrimination under existing federal law when it ruled in an 8-3 ruling that existing civil rights laws protect against such discrimination.

Reuters article about the 7th Circuit decision

AP/Buzzfeed article about the ruling, including court’s actual opinion

HowAppealing Links, Part 1

HowAppealing Links, Part 2

Analysis of Appellate Work and History

Empirical SCOTUS analysis of “The Most Powerful Justices Across Time” 

Practice Items

Reuters  on judge sanctioning firm over line spacing and font

#AppellateTwitter’s #PracticeTuesday thread this week about tips, processes, advice on finalizing briefs

Twitter:  Trial by Combat denied