Federal appellate court practice can be a daunting experience, especially if you practice in multiple circuits. While the circuits share many common rules and practices, many of the circuits also have unique features that are important to be aware of. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(4) states that one of the things that must be [...]
Judge Richard Posner, of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, recently laid out his view of appellate briefs (you can read the article on the ABA website here). Judge Posner writes: So, my essential advice to the appellate brief writer is to put yourself in the judge’s shoes all the way, as it were. That [...]
Judge Posner has been in the news a lot lately (reviewing tearing apart Justice Scalia's new book here). He is normally known for being a pragmatic judge, which is why his recent opinion is so bizarre. In United States v. Williams, Judge Posner's pragmatism was instead replaced with a cavalier attitude towards the right to counsel and towards [...]
I ran across a rather strange case in the Seventh Circuit involving several defendants on trial for various tax, mail and wire fraud counts. This was far from a routine tax case. To say the case was complex is kind of an understatement—there were over 1 million documents related to the trial. During the middle [...]