How Appealing



Monday, March 16, 2015

“‘You Can’t Handle The Ruth’: Ruth Bader Ginsburg given funny T-shirt at Brooklyn court for Eastern District celebration.” The New York Daily News has this report.

Online at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick has an essay titled “Justice LOLZ Grumpycat Notorious R.B.G.: How a gentle Supreme Court justice became a badass gangsta Internet meme.”

And at the “Reliable Source” blog of The Washington Post, Emily Heil has an entry titled “Ruth Bader Ginsburg celebrates birthday in baller style, obviously.”

Posted at 10:57 PM by Howard Bashman



“Clones on the Court: A Supreme Court that once included former senators and governors is populated today by judges with identical resumes; Here’s why that’s a mistake.” Law professor Akhil Reed Amar will have this essay in the April 2015 issue of The Atlantic.

Posted at 10:54 PM by Howard Bashman



“Inmate asks high court to hear sex-change case”: The Associated Press has a report that begins, “Lawyers for a transgender inmate convicted of murder asked the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to overturn a ruling denying her request for sex-reassignment surgery.”

Posted at 10:05 PM by Howard Bashman



“Feds deny foot-dragging in court fight over immigration”: Josh Gerstein of Politico.com has a blog post that begins, “Lawyers for the Obama Administration are rejecting claims that the federal government has dawdled in its response to an injunction a federal judge issued last months against President Barack Obama’s plan to make millions more illegal immigrants eligible for quasi-legal status and work permits.”

Posted at 6:30 PM by Howard Bashman



From the Home Office in Wahoo, Nebraska: On Saturday, I had a post that mentioned “my list of the ten best opinion writers on the U.S. Courts of Appeals.”

That post identified by name one of the judges on that list and unambiguously described another. Since then, a few readers have emailed to ask when I will reveal the other eight judges on my list.

At the risk of eliminating the suspense, longtime readers of this blog should already have quite a good idea of the judges on this list. Indeed, the competition for the final slot was quite intense, leading to several honorable mentions in the category of “writes a darn good dissent.” In my experience, certain federal appellate judges take a more hands-on approach to writing dissents (or most any separate opinion, for that matter), and thus their own actual writing style may shine through in a dissent where it might often not in what might be a largely law clerk-written majority opinion.

For now, I will reveal a third name on my top-ten list, Tenth Circuit Judge Neil M. Gorsuch. The seven other judges on my list will be identified in due course, although I doubt that they will come as much of a surprise to this blog’s most avid readers.

And, at an appropriate time (i.e., not quite yet), I may ask readers who wish to share their own lists of their ten most favorite currently serving federal appellate judicial authors to forward such lists via email to me for publication here.

Posted at 3:40 PM by Howard Bashman



You can now view online the video of the oral argument that I presented last Tuesday in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: Via this link. My argument begins approximately midway through the second video from March 10, 2015

I previously linked to coverage of the oral argument in posts that you can access here and here.

Posted at 2:03 PM by Howard Bashman



“Patent verdict favoring Enzo Biochem is reversed by US appeals court”: Reuters has this news brief.

And Enzo Biochem Inc. has issued a news release titled “Enzo Biochem to Request Rehearing of Court of Appeals Decision.”

You can access today’s ruling of a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit at this link.

Update: Susan Decker of Bloomberg News reports that “Enzo Plunges After $61 Million Applera Judgment Tossed.”

Posted at 12:34 PM by Howard Bashman



“Net Neutrality Goes to Court: A Guide to the Internet’s Legal Fate; The lawsuits against the FCC’s Open Internet rules could arrive this week.” Bloomberg News has this report.

Posted at 12:30 PM by Howard Bashman



“U.S. Judge Mark Fuller of Alabama may face ouster after domestic abuse claim”: Timothy M. Phelps of The Los Angeles Times has this report today.

Posted at 9:40 AM by Howard Bashman



“Records reveal lack of protocol in Clayton Lockett’s Oklahoma execution”: In today’s edition of The Tulsa World, Cary Aspinwall and Ziva Branstetter have this front page article.

Posted at 8:50 AM by Howard Bashman



“You Be the Judge: Why not, seems like everybody else is — and strangling the election process.” Today’s edition of The Philadelphia Daily News contains an editorial that begins, “Electing judges has been a bad idea for a long time. Now, it is getting to be ridiculous.”

Posted at 8:47 AM by Howard Bashman