Oral arguments

Here, divided by argument. The last case was cut-off; sorry William and Sebastian.

Also: The Sixth Circuit had affirmed class certification in the GM suit; the court granted rehearing en banc.

Preparation for Arguments

A couple of things as you finish exams and begin prepping for arguments:

1) Please take some time to listen to actual arguments, wither at www.oyez.org or www.supremecourt.gov. I want these to sound more like real arguments than moot court. Reveiw the Order on Procedure.

2) We have 27 cases to get through on the schedule of cases. I plan to front-load Wednesday so we can finish earlier on Thursday. So my hope is to get through 17 cases (through Festeryga) on Wednesday and the remaining 9 on Thursday, allowing us to finish the semester early afternoon. 

3) If both of your arguments will be on Day One or Day Two, you need not dress up for the other day.

4) Note that Make Your Life Epic and Martinez (consolidated) came out different ways below. So Gill represents the petitioner in Make Your Life and respondent in Martinez (arguing in favor of appealability); Sunny represents respondent in MYL and petitioner in Martinez (arguing against appealability).

5) Reminder that petitioner is the party that lost in the court of appeals, regardless of who was plaintiff in the district court or who was appellant in the lower-court cases.

Timing retirements (from Eduardo)

Two district judges rescinded their announced plans to take senior status following the election of Donald Trump. Mitch McConnell is not pleased.

Whether McConnell (who held open a SCOTUS seat for more than a year to manipulate who would fill it) has standing to complain about gamesmanship is up for debate. But recall the criticism of life tenure (and a reason to even appointments) as to SCOTUS has been justices manipulating retirements. This shows (and there are other examples) how the problem is not limited to SCOTUS but has trickled to lower courts.