Adam Feldman takes a look at “The Changing Face of Supreme Court Oral Arguments” at his Legalytics Substack. The whole article is interesting and worth reading. Here are his takeaways:
· Oral arguments are taking longer and there is no evidence that this will change soon.
· Attorneys are speaking more on the balance (than
The Fourth Circuit is notoriously stingy when it comes to granting oral argument. Last year (admittedly an odd year), CA4 terminated 696 private civil cases. It terminated 86 of them, or 12%, after oral argument. It reversed in 36 of them, or just over 5%. Steve Klepper has a nice essay from 2014 about all of this over at the Maryland Appellate Blog. He argues that given modern Fourth-Circuit practice, the statement concerning oral argument under Local Rule 34(a) is the most important part of a brief. Steve urges appellants and appellees alike to include a robust statement about the need for oral argument, drawing on the criteria for publishing opinions under Local Rule 36(a):
Opinions delivered by the Court will be published only if the opinion satisfies one or more of the standards for publication:
i. It establishes, alters, modifies, clarifies, or explains a rule of law within this Circuit; or
ii. It involves a legal issue of continuing public interest; or
iii. It criticizes existing law; or
iv. It contains a historical review of a legal rule that is not duplicative; or
v. It resolves a conflict between panels of this Court, or creates a conflict with a decision in another circuit.
This is great advice! I’ve cribbed it before. But why are we going back to the well now?
Continue Reading Oral Argument and Revised Code Section 17.1-403
I had my first two two telephone oral arguments in the Supreme Court of Virginia this morning. Merits arguments at that. They were weird! How so? Glad you asked:
Continue Reading Quick Report From a Pair of Telephone Oral Arguments at SCOVA
Longtime readers know that I’m a huge fan of oral argument. Giving counsel a chance to address the Court’s questions before the decision conference strikes me as vital.
But for obvious reasons, recent events have complicated courts’ efforts to hold argument.Continue Reading Oral Argument During the Pandemic
Raffi Melkonian, an appellate lawyer from Texas and the dean of #appellatetwitter, has been working on what he considers the hardest problem at oral argument: the judge who has misunderstood something and is angry about it.
Continue Reading The Hardest Problem at Oral Argument
Have you seen this week’s Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly? First page, above the fold, is an article called “10 Steps for Preparing for an Appellate Argument” by Dawn Solowey, a tall-building lawyer from Boston. As longtime readers know that I’m a sucker for these articles.
Unfortunately, this one is an exception. It’s bad–preposterously bad, really,
Just about everyone who’s argued before the Supreme Court of Virginia has tortured him- or her-self with the same mind game at one point or another. It usually starts with a chain of thought that goes something like this:
Wow, that was an
Ever want to see the appellate equivalent of torture porn? Here’s a video that’s making the rounds of an oral argument from the Ninth Circuit in a case called Baca v. Adams:
httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sCUrhgXjH4
Skip ahead to 16:03, and be sure to watch all the way to the end. Otherwise, you’ll miss the part where
There’s a lot to like about practicing in the Fourth Circuit–the case managers are excellent, the local rules and IOPs are intuitive, and the staff is remarkably responsive. It’s probably the most user friendly court I’ve ever seen . . . except
Here’s a guest post from my partner and longtime friend of De Novo, Monica Monday, in which she owns up to her personal demons (such as they are):
I admit it. I am an appellate argument junkie. This has been a long-standing problem, but when the Supreme Court of Virginia began releasing audio recordings