Yesterday, a friend of mine handed me an article from the Bluffs News. After I read it, I immediately thought of law professors and prospective law school students. Dear Professor Millington, Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to [...]
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 [...]
If we release prisoners to relieve overcrowding, then prisoners will rape, rob and murder our citizens. That is frightening; therefore we shouldn’t release prisoners, even though the State cannot afford to humanely incarcerate them. This argument was at the heart of Justices Scalia and Alito’s dissenting opinions last week in the California prison [...]
The Supreme Court released their case distribution schedule for the October 2011 Term. The schedule lists the Court's distribution dates for both both in forma pauperis and paid cases, as well as the corresponding conference dates. The distribution dates are important for determining the due date of cert stage reply brief. To view the 2011 Term [...]
Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the U.S. Sentencing Commission about whether the new reductions for crack cocaine offenders should be applied retroactively--that is, to those sentenced before the new reductions occurred. Although the Department of Justice agreed that the crack cocaine sentence reductions should be applied retroactively, DOJ also contended that the Commission [...]
The discussion about the Supreme Court's landmark decision last week in Brown v. Plata continues unabated. There are basically two sides of the debate. Those predicting that a release of prisoners will create a crime wave in California, and therefore, the Supreme Court should not have upheld the release order. You can find these views [...]
The Supreme Court granted certiorari last week almost assuredly to reverse a Ninth Circuit ruling creating a Bivens action for prisoners wanting to sue prison personnel at privately-run correctional facilities. The case is Minneci, et al., v. Pollard, No. 10-1104. After having read the lower court decision and cert-stage briefs, I am [...]
If you have never heard of David Kazzie, you are missing out on, well, your missing out on a lot of things. The guy is a lawyer but that label hardly does him justice. He is most known for his work on videos. He is the creator of “So You Want To [...]
In what is undoubtedly the biggest win for inmates serving time in deplorable prison conditions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the Prison Litigation Reform Act DOES authorize the release of prisoners to remedy the egregious violation of prisoners’ constitutional rights. The case is Brown, et al. v. Plata, et al., No. [...]
Many have argued that the Supreme Court’s process for choosing cases is too secretive, allows too much influence to the Court’s clerks, provides too many opportunities to business interests and too little opportunities to public interests, and should be changed. To alleviate some of these concerns, scholars have proposed changes to the Court’s certiorari [...]