On January 18th, the Supreme Court released a short order requesting O’Melveny & Myers attorney Anton Metlitsky brief and argue the case of Lucia v. SEC supporting the decision below. The case examines whether administrative law judges of the Securities and Exchange Commission are officers of the United States within the meaning of the appointments clause….
Tag: Beckles v. U.S.
The Court’s Most Cited Decisions of 2016
One trope that was often repeated this past Supreme Court term was that the Court did not take on a particularly exciting caseload. Evidence for this comes in the form of the unprecedented level of agreement among the justices compounded by the eight justice composition for most of the term that wished to avoid 4-4…
An Uphill Battle for the Court’s Liberals
“[I]f a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs…
Highly Citable
Attorneys before the Supreme Court have multiple goals. Whether the ultimate goal is winning a case, affecting public policy, or testing the constitutionality of a piece of legislation, good counsel get the justices’ attention. How they get the justices’ attention varies. Some engender attention through their regular experience before the Court while others through the…
The First Batch of Decisions Each Term
Through the first thirty-five slip-opinions of the Supreme Court’s 2016 term there are notable similarities and differences from the Court’s prior terms. All decisions so far this term were determined by eight Justices or fewer as Justice Gorsuch has yet to sign on to a majority or separate slip-opinion (Beckles v. United States, for instance…
Easy Reading (By Supreme Court Standards)
Supreme Court briefs are team efforts usually with a main coordinating partner/attorney who is known as the “counsel of record.” Although the number of attorneys staffing briefs varies, at the Supreme Court level the number of attorneys listed on the brief is often more than five and can be upwards of ten. This does not…
The Most Important Cases Already Argued This Term in SCOTUS
Over the last few years the Supreme Court has heard multiple landmark cases. The issues in these cases ranged from abortion to marriage equality and from affirmative action in schools to national healthcare. So far this Term the Court has not heard cases of the same magnitude. While cases like Beckles v. United States may…
The OSG and More Potential Cases for 2016
With the Supreme Court’s 2016 Term around the corner, there is nowhere near a full slate of cases for the Justices to hear. While the October and November hearing schedules were released and there are a handful of other granted cases without oral argument dates on the calendar, there are currently only approximately 29 cases (see SCOTUSBlog’s list…
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