Appellate articles galore

Today's DJ is chock-full of appellate goodness.

First, Justice Cuellar pens Access to Justice In Any Language, concluding, "The more California can show the country and the world that it's possible to deliver justice equally even when millions are limited English speakers, the more we will help build a world bridging the divide between culture and language, where people find common ground and institutions are legitimate because they can hear every voice, in any language."


Second, Kirk Jenkins (now at H&L), crunches out The California Supreme Court: 2017 By The Numbers, diving into data from last year to see what can be learned. He interprets the data to suggest that the "court's center has dominated in most areas of the law," rather than having taken a turn toward the left. In 2017 the court decided 84 cases, 42 civil and 42 criminal. Civil cases took an average of 641 days from grant to review to oral argument. The article has a nifty chart that shows the 2d DCA has the most civil cases taken (at 17, and with a 58% reversal rate). The prolonged vacancy (Justice Werdegar's seat) has apparently not slowed down the court's productivity. How important is publication for getting review? Well, 21% of civil cases taken were unpublished and 55% of criminal cases were unpublished.

Third, moving to SCOTUS, Susan Yorke of CALG presents The Record on Appeal Versus the Internet Age: "A recent testy interchange between Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor during oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted a tension between the ubiquity of information on the internet and the constrained nature of the record on appeal."

Fourth, Jeffrey Bornstein and Andrew Spore of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, offer Sometimes it's good to be wrong: Gorsuch's surprise vote, about Sessions v. Dimaya.

The NLJ reports Stanford Law's Jeffrey Fisher, Veteran SCOTUS Lawyer, Joins O’Melveny as Special Counsel.

For some writing tips, see Judges Discuss Good and Bad Legal Writing.
FYI, the 9th Circuit has adopted the New Law Clerk Hiring Plan: Applicants Must Complete 2d Year of Law School.