The Cockle Blog’s focus in recent weeks on a particular line on U.S. Supreme Court petition covers was not intended as an ongoing, multipart series, but there appear to be more nuances involved than initially apparent. A question raised when composing every petition (and subsequent brief) cover is which is the correct lower court to [...]
While most of the legal community has focused on the substance of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Foster v. Chatman, 578 U.S. ___ (May 23, 2016) (No. 14-8349) (something to do with cluttering up attorney files with notes on jury selection), the Cockle Blog is all over the Court’s procedural focus in that [...]
“Clarity of thought is a must for brevity in speech.” ― Somali K. Chakrabarti The questions presented page is assuredly the most important element of a Supreme Court petition. Justices can reject an entire case based on review of the questions alone. Rule 14.1 provides that they should be “expressed concisely in relation to [...]
We are frequently asked which citation style(s) the Supreme Court prefers. While the Court’s rules are largely silent on these matters, what follows is an introductory guide to issues of citation and quotation. Case Citation The Court’s rules do not speak to a particular method for citing cases. However, Gressman’s Supreme Court Practice (known [...]
Pending at the U.S. Supreme Court is a “never-before-raised procedural issue,” raised at the Court’s own prompting in “a truly rare move,” that relates to a requirement that everyone filing a petition for certiorari must address every time on the cover. Every petition cover must insert a lower court’s name in the blank in the [...]
One of the services most valued by attorneys is proofreading. Because our goal is for all briefs to be as clean as possible when finished, at Cockle Legal Briefs, your documents are proofread, word-for-word, by two professionally-trained legal proofreaders. Our legal proofreaders are trained to read documents for misspellings, grammatical errors, improper sentence structure, and [...]
The first four parts of this series covered the Supreme Court appendix contents that are either required or that are too lengthy to leave in the brief. This final installment addresses a provision that allows pretty much anything, but that should be used with caution. Other Material Believed Essential. Rule 14.1(i)(vi) is the tempting catchall [...]
Rehearing Denial. The last required appendix document may or may not exist, but if it does, it goes at the end of the required category. This would be an order denying rehearing by the court that issued the final judgment you are directly challenging. Rule 14.1(i)(iii). Or the last document may be something else, depending [...]
So far this series has covered the critical opening document of an appendix for a U.S. Supreme Court petition for certiorari. Now we move down the list in Sup. Ct. R. 14.1(i) to other must-have documents. Other Relevant Decisions. After the decision you actually want the Supreme Court to review comes a required category of [...]
When you are putting together a U.S. Supreme Court petition’s “appendix,” forget what you know about collections of documents going by the same name under lower federal court and state court appellate rules. Just read Supreme Court Rule 14.1(i). The rule’s limited categories of required documents reflect the high court’s unique role and the narrow [...]