Legal minds on legal matters and whatever else strikes our fancy.
With the start of the summer recess, the Supreme Court discontinued use of the 2010 Term docket numbers, ending with number 10-1558—a petition for mandamus filed by firefighter Frank Ricci. Yes, that Frank Ricci. For the fifth straight year, the number of paid petitions for certiorari, mandamus and original habeas corpus filed [...]
Like other lawyers I know, I don’t usually follow high-profile crime stories. Applying the law to the messy non sequiturs of life can be dissatisfying in the most dignified setting; media hyperbole makes it simply agonizing. Just ask the jurors, lawyers and insiders of the Casey Anthony case. So, reluctantly, I clicked the link from [...]
It seems like every time I go online I see the omnipresent Casey Anthony. Her pictures always elicit the same taste as her media coverage—it’s like regurgitating curdled yogurt. So, with bile and awe, I’ve recently read how several states and even the federal government are considering new laws in her honor, [...]
Two cases from the mopping-up phase of the recent Supreme Court term—J.D.B. v. North Carolina and Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn.—have me thinking about kids and the Constitution. These two cases join prior Court decisions that delineate the constitutional rights of minors—cases such as Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1st Amendment—children [...]
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 [...]
We filed a merits brief this week: the Respondent’s Brief in Howes v. Fields, No. 10-680, filed on July 7, 2011.
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 [...]