DJ articles & More

Today's DJ features several articles of appellate note:

• In Judicial Laterals, Emory Prof. Jonathan Nash explores when judges will move from one judicial to another. He concludes that most judicial laterals move from state courts to the federal system. But he also notes that those who move from the federal judiciary to state courts do so as a function of "judicial professionalism and relative salaries." In particular, he notes that of seven such lateral moves since 1980, five were moves to the California state judiciary, noting that California is "near the very top of the professionalism score measure." Names that come immediate to mind about this are Justices Moreno, Manella and Collins... Prof. Nash's article is Judicial Laterals (2017) 70 Vanderbilt Law Rev. 1911.
• PJ Gilbert's first column of the year is Scary New Year: The presents I receive these days scare the hell out of me: "Alexa: How is the court to rule?"
• Moskovitz on appeals presents Strategic Reading, discussing approaches to appellate reading. For example, when reading a record, he puts himself into the shoes of an appellate judge and looks for "anything that would make we want to reverse." He's looking for facts and argument to help present a theme of injustice. He then carefully reads the relevant law: statutes, cases, and treatises, looking for support for his theme of injustice. Next, in reading the record, he looks for items to support his theme as well as for those that might undercut his message. And in reading the other side's brief, he again looks at it from the perspective of an appellate judge.
• Also, last week's DJ started a new column, Exceptionally Appealing, that will run the first Tuesday of each month covering exceptions to general rules of appellate practice and procedure. The first installment was When 60 days is too late! discussing instances when the time to appeal is not the "usual 60 days."

Also of interest today from the Volokh Conspiracy, Exciting Developments in Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction.

Washington Post posts this op-ed Pressuring Harassers to Quit Can End Up Protecting Them.

Today's Wall Street Journal has Why Do Federal Judges Need Clerks, Anyway? in which Prof. Blann Harlan Reynolds (University of Tennessee) proposes "eliminating law clerks for the lower federal courts." He writes:

Justice Louis Brandeis, who served from 1916-39, is said to have observed that the high court's members "are almost the only people in Washington who do their own work."
That's not true anymore. The Supreme Court decided 160 cases in 1945, when each justice had a single clerk. Nowadays it decides about half as many cases with four clerks per justice. Law clerks were unknown for roughly the first century of the American judiciary, and the courts seemed to do fine. As my law students often comment, the older opinions are shorter and more intelligible than the newer ones.

And Law360 offers How Firms Are Grooming The Next Appellate Stars: "Client demands and market forces have created a shortage of oral arguments opportunities for developing new appellate lawyers. In a series of interviews with Law360, firms explain how they are dealing with the problem."

Did you forget to get an Appellate Dork a present over the holidays? SCAN suggests this Supreme Court Mug from The Unemployed Philosophers Guild! (And see the Guild's instructional video on mug utilization here.)

The Sacramento County Bar Associations' Appellate Law Section hosts its Annual wine & cheese reception on Thursday, Feb. 1 (at the 3d Dist. Courthouse) 5 to 7 p.m. Rsvp here.