Want cert? Get amici!
Law.com has
For Hopeful Supreme Court Litigants, It Helps to Have Friends—And Lots of Them- With many of the justices pooling their law clerks to tackle the thousands of petitions that arrive at the court each term, litigants have but a few chances to make an impression on a clerk sifting through a stack of Supreme Court appeals. Having your case supported by a bundle of cream-colored briefs from outside groups is one way to do just that.
- there is now some level of cert-stage amicus participation in two out of every three cases that the justices agree to hear.
- In the October 2024 term, for instance, there were one or more cert-stage amicus briefs for 68% of cases that went to oral argument, according to an analysis by the National Law Journal. That’s compared to just 44% during the October 2014 term, a figure that has gradually climbed over the past decade.
- Today, “the conventional wisdom is… having petition-stage amicus support is considerably more important than having merits-stage support,” said Larry Ebner of the Atlantic Legal Foundation, a longtime appellate advocate and prolific amicus brief filer.
