David Kopel over at the Volokh Conspiracy provides some insight into Messerschmidt v. Millender, No. 10-704. That petition was filed by Tim Coates, of Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland, and the petition was printed at Cockle Printing. The Questions Presented are: This Court has held that police officers who procure and execute warrants later determined invalid [...]
Yesterday, the New York Times had an interesting piece about the role that non-lawyers play in New York immigration courts. Father Robert Vitaglione, a non-lawyer, represented people in immigration cases. The Times reports that: For more than three decades, Robert Vitaglione never turned down a client, representing thousands of immigrants in New York’s [...]
John Elwood at the Volokh Conspiracy and Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences have noted a new resource for Supreme Court watchers. Certpool.com is a website dedicated to tracking the Court's certiorari docket. The site--developed by Texas attorney Don Cruse--separates SCOTUS petitions into federal circuits or state courts from which the petitions originated. This is a valuable site for SCOTUS [...]
I don’t normally get excited about receiving subscription email newsletters. The one exception is when I see a Legal Writing Pro newsletter in my inbox. The newsletter is prepared by Ross Guberman and you can subscribe to it here. Guberman is a genuis at explaining the art of writing because his explanations are clear [...]
Tom Goldstein and SCOTUS Blog put together their end-of-the-term memorandum and stat pack, which you can find here and here. A couple points about the 2010 Term statistics. Although every year the Court assails the Ninth Circuit, this Term really was THE Term of rebuke for the Ninth Circuit. The Court normally takes a lot of Ninth [...]
Today, the U.S. Sentencing Commission "voted unanimously" to give "retroactive effect to its proposed permanent amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines that implements the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010," a press release said. The retroactively applicable guideline amendment for crack cocaine offenses will allow over 12,000 federal prisoners to seek resentencing. According to the Sentencing Commission [...]
The Third Circuit took the unusual step of declaring a Supreme Court opinion (Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. 1473 (2010)) retroactively applicable to defedants filing habeas corpus motions. The case is United States v. Orocio and the opinion can be found here. For those who do not regularly follow post-conviction and habeas [...]
I remember when Steve Lubet questioned whether former Solicitor General Ted Olson should be allowed to argue that the federal campaign finance reform statute was unconstitutional in Citizens United, because, as Solicitor General, he had argued a contrary position. At the time, I didn’t understand why that mattered since “advocates represent clients,” [...]
I will be writing a series of posts (entitled “Matters of Practice”) on the most frequently asked questions I receive about filing briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the first post in the series. At Cockle Printing, I am often asked what citation style the Supreme Court prefers and whether the Court’s rules specify [...]
I read several great pieces over the weekend. Here are the best of them. University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey R. Stone had this New York Times op-ed entitled "Our Untransparent President." Mr. Stone alleges that: "While Mr. Obama has taken certain steps, notably early in his administration, to scale back some of the Bush-era excesses, [...]