Bong Hits 4 SCOTUS
And they agreed to hear two other cases: a taxpayer lawsuit, and an appeal involving the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management. Control your excitement, people.
Tom Goldstein is a bit peeved at how late the Court is granting certiorari. This leaves relatively little time between the cert grant and the argument, which has unfortunate consequences:
The failure to adapt the briefing schedule to the smaller size of the Court’s docket produces expedited briefs that are less thorough and helpful to the Justices and creates a recurring cycle in which it is necessary to apply still more expedited schedules.
But we're not shedding tears for the attorneys whose cases get granted. The opportunity to brief and argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court is once-in-a-lifetime experience. Suck it up and deal, people.
(Of course, Goldstein -- a veteran Supreme Court litigator -- probably doesn't quite the same thrill from strutting his stuff at One First Street as SCOTUS virgins.)
Supreme Court Takes 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' Case [New York Times]
Court grants three cases [SCOTUSblog]
An Update on the State of the Docket [SCOTUSblog]
(3) Comments
I think Mr. Goldstein's point was that, because of the short briefing schedule, the quality of the briefs that get to the court isn't as good.
One way to read that is that Goldstein's complaining about short deadlines for completing his homework.
The better way, I think, is that all else being equal, giving litigants an unnecessarily short time in which to write briefs may result in marginally lower-quality decisions from the court, simply because they have less help.
As a former appellate clerk, surely you understand how bad most lawyers are and how much more difficult it is to decide a badly-briefed case. These people need all of the help they can get.
Also, this puts litigants at a disadvantage that Goldstein can't profit from. Most litigants hire the Supreme Court specialist before the petition gets granted. It's more plausible to say "I'm the one who can get the Court to take your case" than it is to say "now that the Court has granted cert, I'm the one who can write good brief quickly enough."
I think that's a pipe, not a bong.
no, i'm pretty sure that's a bong.