Friday, October 15, 2021

SCOTUS news & more

NLJ has Biden's Supreme Court Commission Goes Public With Draft Findings

  • The draft materials are the first public findings released by the commission since it was created by President Joe Biden in an April executive order. The commission was not charged with making specific recommendations, but rather analyzing certain proposals for court reform.
  • The commission divided its draft discussion materials into five parts: a history of the reform debate; membership and size of the court; term limits; the court’s role in the Constitutional system, and case selection and review: docket, rules and practices.

Bloomberg law has Hybrid Format Leads to Longer Supreme Court Arguments -- "The U.S. Supreme Court has taken a more lax approach to time limits since returning to in-person arguments this month and that’s leading to longer sessions." The article notes that time was exceeded in 7 of 9 cases heard this month.

The NYT runs this op-ed on Justice Thomas.

The Vetting Room has a piece on Judge Gabriel Sanchez - Nominee to the Ninth Circuit

CLA's Litigation Section's October 2021 issue of Litigation Update is now online. 


The DJ has 3rd District Speedup too late for some defendants -- "Some defendants have served months or years more in prison or jail only to have their sentences reduced or vacated by the 3rd District Court of Appeal after they were already released, attorneys say."

Law.com has Is Now the Time for Law Firms to Rethink the Makeup of Trial Teams? "Some law firms are using the pandemic to experiment with trial teams that also include appellate lawyers." "[W]hile adding appellate attorneys to trial teams is not new, the pandemic may have accelerated the trend" because "there's been an increased emphasis on dispositive motions, and on pretrial appellate remedies" to move cases off trial court dockets.