Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup January 12 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).
Potential SCOTUS Nominee Profile:
SCOTUSBlog had a profile summary of one of President-Elect Donald Trump’s potential nominees to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Judge William H. Pryor of the U.S Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is considered by many to be the front-runner for the open seat.
Twitter Discussion About Typeface Conventions for Emphasis:
Jennifer Romig, of listenlikealawyer.com, pointed in a Twitter post this week to an April 2016 blog post by Jason Steed, of Bell Nunnally & Martin, about whether it is preferable to use italics, or bold, or boldface italics to emphasize text. Steed had taken a Twitter poll, in which italics won by a landslide, with bold slightly edging boldface italics as the next preference. Steed argued in the blog post that this was a bit surprising, inasmuch as italics is already used as a convention for a variety of other aspects of legal writing, such as citations and foreign-language terms, while bold is rarely used for anything else. Romig’s Twitter post also included responses from Michael Skotnicki, of the Briefly Writing blog, pointing to a couple of his blog posts about the value of using less typeface convention for emphasis instead of more and about alternative ways to place emphasis on important information.
SCOTUS Hears Case on Disabled Children and Public Schools:
The Supreme Court heard argument this week in a case concerning the level of education support that must be provided to disabled children in public school systems. The case specifically dealt with the concept of “free appropriate public education,” guaranteed to disabled children under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The case is Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District.
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Unwritten Opinions: Oregon Court of Appeals:
The Oregon Court of Appeals — like other state appellate courts — disposes of a percentage of its cases in decisions that are affirmed without opinion. Oregon is somewhat unusual in that a relatively high percentage of its business is done through “decisions affirmed without opinion” or AWOPs — roughly 65 percent, in fact. According to the chief judge, Rick Haselton, a big reason for the high percentage in Oregon is the lack of people to write all of the opinions that would be needed to bring the rate down. An interesting article discussing the situation, as well as some possible remedies, appeared at Investigate West, a nonprofit journalism watchdog.