Tuesday, August 27, 2024

SCOTUS amicus invitations

The NLJ has With Amicus Appointments, Ex-Clerks Get Coveted Chance to Argue at SCOTUS -- They won’t get paid. It’s going to be extremely time-consuming. There is no prior counsel to review their work. And they’ll spend months drafting briefs and preparing for an argument where the best case scenario is achieving a victory on behalf of a client that does not exist.
Once or twice a term, a Supreme Court justice will pick up the phone and dial one of their former clerks with an unusual request: are they available to come in and argue a case that they know nothing about?