New AAAL website & New Federal Appeals treatise

The American Academy of Appellate Lawyers has revamped its website. Check out the new look here.

BCLP Partner Jean-Claude (JC) André, co-chair of the firm’s Appellate & Supreme Court Group, co-authored Federal Appeals: Jurisdiction & Practice (Thomson Reuters 2023 ed.), which contains a solid framework for an introduction to appellate law, followed by a detailed explication of the intricacies and nuances of jurisdiction and practice in the federal appellate courts.

The Ninth Circuit will expand its new case management system (ACMS) to include all criminal appeals opened in this court as of March 1, 2023. Click here for more information.

And from the published 9th Cir. opinion today in Lopez v. Garland discussing the "cross-appeal rule":

The cross-appeal rule is an “unwritten but longstanding rule” under which “an appellate court may not alter a judgment to benefit a nonappealing party.” Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U.S. 237, 244 (2008). The Supreme Court has described that rule as “firmly entrenched,” noting that “in more than two centuries of repeatedly endorsing the cross-appeal requirement, not a single one of our holdings has ever recognized an exception to the rule.” Id. at 245 (quoting El Paso Nat. Gas Co. v. Neztsosie, 526 U.S. 473, 480 (1999)); accord Morley Constr. Co. v. Maryland Cas. Co., 300 U.S. 185, 191 (1937) (describing the rule as “inveterate and certain”). 

although an appellee must cross-appeal if it seeks to alter the judgment, it need not do so “if all it wishes to do is present alternative grounds for affirming the judgment.” Ellis v. Salt River Project Agric. Improvement & Power Dist., 24 F.4th 1262, 1268 (9th Cir. 2022). That is true even if those alternative grounds, taken to their logical conclusion, might suggest that the judgment should be altered: “An appellee who does not take a cross-appeal may ‘urge in support of a decree any matter appearing in the record, although his argument may involve an attack upon the reasoning of the lower court.’” Jennings v. Stephens, 574 U.S. 271, 276 (2015) (quoting United States v. American Ry. Express Co., 265 U.S. 425, 435 (1924)); see also In re Oil Spill by the Amoco Cadiz, 954 F.2d 1279, 1333 (7th Cir. 1992).