Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup
Here are a handful of tidbits on appellate practice from around the web this past week. 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).
Presidential Debate: SCOTUS as a Topic
The third and final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was this week, hosted by Chris Wallace. And SCOTUS was a topic.
Law.com ran a story early in the week, in which it reported on the results of efforts by Law.com reporters to reach out to Supreme Court practitioners and other lawyers about what the candidates should be asked about SCOTUS. The ARTICLE highlighted some of the responses.
Law.com followed up after the debate with a review of how the topic was actually handled. Although SCOTUS was scheduled as one of six, 15-minute topics for the debate, moderator Chris Wallace struggled to get the candidates to provide much in-depth discussion about where the Court might go in the next several years and how they viewed the Constitution. Clinton emphasized that she hopes to see the Court “not reverse marriage equality, not reverse Roe v. Wade, and . . . stand up against Citizens United.” Clinton also urged Congress to go forward with the process of considering Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Court. Trump’s vision for the Court included observations that “[t]he justices [he’s] going to appoint will be pro-life, they will have a conservative bent, they will be protecting the Second Amendment . . . [and] will interpret the Constitution the way the Founders wanted it.”
More on the intersection of the election and SCOTUS and the future of the Court can be found in this week’s Thursday Round-Up at SCOTUSblog.
Follow-Up on Donald Trump vs. The New York Times
Last week’s Weekly Roundup included the “disagreement” between Donald Trump and the NYT concerning the Times article about women accusing Trump of inappropriate behavior. The letters exchanged between Trump’s lawyer and the Times’ lawyer went viral
This week, the author of the Times response to Trump, David McCraw, penned a piece for Times Insider, in which he described his reactions to the response letter going viral. See: “I Hardly Expected My Letter to Donald Trump to Go Viral.” McCraw notes that he wrote the response letter “in about 45 minutes . . . between a meeting on the company’s emergency operations plan and a conference call about a new patent suit.” After that, McCraw and three colleagues from the Legal Department spent “about 30 minutes, talking about whether the overall point and tone were right, whether words should be tweaked, whether the ending was right.” McCraw notes that when he was ready to publish the letter, he jokingly told his legal department colleagues to “[s]tand by [their] Twitter accounts.” Then the letter went viral.
McCraw took note of the Internet debate over things like his comma usage and whether there should be one or two spaces after a period. he received hundreds of emails in response to the letter, mostly from strangers but also from former students, colleagues, and law school classmates. He noted that his intent was not to get into politics, but to focus on the basics of press freedom, in a way merited in many cases removed from the spotlight of Donald Trump. But he also heard from a number of women who felt his letter was also speaking on their behalf, standing up for the women who had come forward to make the accusations against Trump.
According to McCraw, his “favorite email was the one that ended: ‘As my sister put it, I’ve never wanted to hang a paragraph from a lawyer on my fridge before.'”
Washington University Law’s Supreme Court Database
First Mondays (@FirstMondaysFM), a seasonal podcast on the Supreme Court, hosted by Ian Samuel (@isamuel) of Harvard Law School and Dan Epps (@danepps) of Washington University St. Louis Law, discussed this resource from Washington University Law in this week’s podcast.
The Supreme Court Database is described on Washington University Law’s website as “the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court.” It “contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2015 terms.”
Put a couple of logs in the fireplace, make some hot cocoa, and settle in for a fall weekend of browsing this resource if you are a fan or follower of SCOTUS. There’s just so much great information there.
Hat Tip: Bob Loeb (@BobLoeb).
On the Lighter Side
Jason Steed (@5thCircAppeals) rejoiced this week at discovering a California appellate court published an opinion using Century Schoolbook font. See SoCal Appellate News Blog.