Thursday, July 21, 2022

I concur with myself

Law.com has Showing Off or Making a Point? Spate of Self-Concurrences Catch Eye of Legal Community-- Aspirations for elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court could drive judges to go beyond the assignment, experts said.

“What we’re talking about is when do judges decide to do extra work? They’ve already done their job. They’ve decided the case, and the sort of baffling thing you’re presented with is, why on earth would they do anything more, especially if they wrote the majority opinion?” said Alex Platt, a law professor at the University of Kansas School of Law.

In the past few months, a number of self-concurrences have garnered attention. Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote a concurrence to his own opinion in January that offered an “alternative opinion” that an en banc panel could use if the case were reheard and overturned. And in May, Eleventh Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom wrote a self-concurrence describing what he believes is the appropriate Second Amendment framework for federal appeals courts to follow.
The article also notes self-concurrences by 9th Circuit Judges Bybee and Bade.  (Want to an example of this from the 2d District? See People v. Montelongo (2020) 55 Cal.App.5th 1016.)

On the attorney ethics side of things, Law360 has Atty's 'See You Next Tuesday' Remark Prompts Bar Referral

And CLA Litigation Section's Litigation Update for July 2022 is out now.

For a piece on the longest SCOTUS arguments, see The Marble Palace Blog: The Longest SCOTUS Oral Argument--In a Supreme Court oral argument this past term, something unusual happened: The longest argument by a single advocate in decades.