Good writing makes a world of difference in appellate practice. In an era where some scholars question whether oral arguments have very much utility, briefs, and especially amicus briefs, are thought to play a unique role in Supreme Court decision making. The Court receives briefs in large numbers, with amicus briefs leading the way. Cases with broad national repercussions may garner…
Tag: amicus briefs
Professors as Amici
Amicus briefs filed before the Supreme Court are most commonly used as a tool for interest groups use to convey their positions (for a look at interest groups’ use of amicus briefs see this article by Professor Paul Collins). This is not the sole use of such briefs though. Non-party individuals and groups that have an…
Inferences From Amicus Briefs and How Justice Kennedy Continues to Rule Supreme
This post analyzes the amicus filings from this past Term in three ways. First it looks at counts of cert stage amicus filings and compares them to merits stage filings. This difference show whether the interest in a case prior to the Court granting cert paralleled the interest in the case’s outcome on the merits. …
Comparing Amicus Briefs in Evenwel v. Abbott
A friend of mine practicing in a large firm recently asked me about comparing documents for similarity. While his interests are from a transactional standpoint, the same methods can be used to compare documents within or between cases. To continue with the amicus brief trope from the last post, I thought it would be interesting…
Amicus Briefs and Oral Arguments in the Roberts Court
Do the Justices and their clerks do their homework by reading and analyzing amicus briefs prior to oral arguments? In preparation for a larger project, I thought it would be interesting to probe this question (this also seems timely given Adam Liptak’s column in the New York Times on a recent study examining amicus briefs). …
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