“FEDERAL OFFICES in the Washington, DC area are CLOSED”: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has posted this notice for Tuesday, February 17, 2015.

Coincidentally, tomorrow in Washington, D.C., an “Appellate Rules and Forms Public Hearing” is scheduled to occur to consider, among other things, a controversial proposed amendment to reduce the word limits applicable to federal appellate briefs.

When I learn whether the hearing will occur tomorrow notwithstanding the snow storm affecting Washington, D.C., I will let this blog’s readers know.

Update: The D.C. Circuit has announced that it will be closed on Tuesday, February 17, 2015 due to snow.

Additional reader comments on the proposed FRAP briefing word limit reductions: One very experienced federal appellate practitioner writes:

If I felt I could predict which of my issues the panel was most likely to think meritorious, I would feel more comfortable pruning the issues. But since I have won more than one case on an issue I wouldn’t have bet a plug nickel on, and have lost on issues I was sure were winners, and have suffered summary dispositions where I firmly believed the issues were at least worthy of serious consideration, I no longer believe I can choose my “best three” issues in the sense that appellate judges mean when then say such things at CLE panels. Only if they will tell me in advance which three those are, will I be in a position to comply.

And another longtime reader has sent along the following comment:

I write to comment against the proposal to reduce the maximum word length of federal appellate briefs. I have been in practice nearly 25 years, almost all of that in small firms or as a solo practitioner. Additionally, for a number of years I wrote many, many briefs for other lawyers on a per diem basis. I have litigated up and down the state and federal trial and appellate systems.

The distinguished Circuit Judge,who taught my law school class in Federal Appellate Practice admonished us time and again that the place to make our client’s argument was in the brief. We, as advocates, could control that. Already then in the late ’80s, limits on oral argument were coming into play. Not every case would get oral argument. Fair enough. But now, we get the briefs cut. One could easily conclude that the Circuits just don’t want to be bothered.

For more than the past decade, I’ve sought to avoid the federal courts like the plague. I became convinced their inclination, reflected in their decisions, was not to achieve the simple, just and economical resolution of all cases. The arcana of the Courts’ rules, as applied, yielded judges producing finely wrought opinions, concurrences and dissents sometimes dozens of pages long. They might be parsing, yet again, the inner meaning of the removal statute in cases where two entities with too much money already were fighting over who would get more. In the same batch of cases, some ordinary person, as appellant and seeking justice in the courts for perhaps the first (or only) time in their life, might get a cursory “aff’d mem.”

There are some cases where the brief has to be long. The facts might be complicated. The trial judge may have made a panoply of errors. The ordinary litigant represented by an ordinary lawyer might not — probably won’t — have the money to pay for a specialized appellate advocate nor for the time to spend on honing and sharpening a brief to a single, very short argument. Nor will the ordinary litigant have the daring to stake their case on a single short argument and abandon meritorious arguments. Appellate courts have recently been quite aggressive in seeking out ways to declare arguments abandoned. One has to preserve arguments on the odd chance there might be a “later,” when that argument could prove vital or its abandonment fatal. Nor, for that matter, will the average advocate have the courage to recommend to his clients that they stake the clients’ case on one argument. The average appellant’s advocate has, lurking in the back of his or her consciousness, the specter of a malpractice suit revolving around abandoned arguments and briefs not comprehensive enough. When the average litigant is an appellant, he or she wants to make every argument. Years of counseling average people as clients has left me with the firm conclusion, empirically derived, that many unsophisticated litigants just have a hard time grasping the concept that some arguments are losers which should not be made. It takes some persuading.

The average appellate brief, filed by the average practitioner, probably comes nowhere near the existing word limit. But for those cases where the case requires it, the practitioner should not have to hope for the Court’s grace nor expend the additional time, money and effort on motion practice.

The proposed amendment to the FRAP should not go into effect.

Tomorrow is the deadline for public comments supporting or opposing the proposed briefing word limit reduction. Official comments must be submitted online via this link. Unofficial comments can be emailed to me for consideration for posting here, where they might just be read by many of the same people who will be reviewing the official comments.

“Cleburne judge says he won’t license same-sex weddings”: The Anniston (Ala.) Star has this news update.

“Will John Roberts or Anthony Kennedy Save Obamacare? Lawyers tailor their appeals to each in the fight over the law’s health insurance subsidies.” Sam Baker of National Journal has this report.

“Millions at risk of losing coverage in Supreme Court health law case”: The Washington Post has this news update.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg on abortion, race and the broken Congress”: Irin Carmon of msnbc has this report.

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers opposes the proposed FRAP briefing word limit reductions: You can access that organization’s comments via this link. The organization’s opposition to the proposed word limit reductions begins on page three of the document.

This organization’s grounds for opposing the proposed FRAP briefing word limit reductions strike me as very well reasoned.

Access online the contents of the February 2015 issue of the Stanford Law Review: Via this link.

Mother Nature weighs in on the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure: Tomorrow in Washington, D.C., an “Appellate Rules and Forms Public Hearing” is scheduled to occur.
Coincidentally, overnight in Washington, D.C., the weather forecast calls for 5 to 8 inches of snow.

If the hearing occurs as planned tomorrow, I will link to a transcript of the hearing once it becomes available online.

“King v. Burwell and ideological voting”: Eric Posner has this post today at his blog.

“What Alabama’s Roy Moore Got Right”: Brian Epstein, an assistant professor of philosophy at Tufts University, has this post today at the “Opinionator” blog of The New York Times.

“BC Civil Liberties Association to argue human smuggling cases in Supreme Court”: Today’s edition of The Toronto Globe and Mail contains an article that begins, “The Supreme Court of Canada this week is set to hear arguments in a number of cases calling into question the reach of the country’s human smuggling laws.”

“How to Force Prosecutors to Play Fair”: This editorial appears in today’s edition of The New York Times.

“What Led Me to Disrupt the US Supreme Court and Risk 150 Days Imprisonment”: Curt Ries has this essay online at Truthout.