Since the D.C. Circuit did not issue any opinions last week, I took a look at what might be forthcoming from a certain potential Supreme Court nominee. President Biden has promised to announce his nominee by the end of the month. If Judge Jackson is the chosen nominee (and assuming she follows Judge Garland’s practice) […]
It was bound to happen, wasn’t it? On December 8, 2017, my co-blogger Aaron Nielson reported in D.C. Circuit Review – Reviewed on a speech given by Judge Randolph at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Last week Judge Randolph cited Aaron’s post for the first-ever D.C. Circuit citation to D.C. Circuit […]
As Judge Griffith noted last week on this blog, everyone being discussed in the news as a possible replacement for Justice Breyer has some connection to the D.C. Circuit, and no one more so than Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. So the big news this week was her first opinion for the D.C. Circuit, issued on […]
The big news this week was Justice Breyer’s announcement that he will step down from the Supreme Court at the end of this Term upon the appointment of a successor. Readers of this blog who are inclined to think that most really important legal news must have some connection to the D.C. Circuit (and just […]
Last week, the D.C. Circuit resolved four sets of petitions for review and one appeal. Each set of petitions for review models a different form of regulatory cooperation between the government and private entities: a statute that incorporates industry standards, private enforcement of an agency license, agency review of rules promulgated by self-regulatory organizations, and […]
It was a quiet week at the D.C. Circuit, with no arguments and only two* opinions. In United States v. Turner, the panel addressed the proper interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines in determining a sentence for a supervised-release violation. Under the Guidelines, the court must first determine the grade of violation based on the severity […]
Last week the D.C. Circuit published six opinions in an early celebration of the new year. The FAA, Amtrak, and arbitration clauses all made appearances in a set of fact-bound opinions with few precedential highlights. I’ve read them all so you don’t have to. For readers of this blog, last week’s highlights included administrative law […]
Life on the D.C. Circuit is a mixture of the grand and the mundane. As Haley Proctor wrote in the last entry to this blog, the decisions from the Court two weeks ago included a blockbuster case: a clash between President Biden and former President Trump over presidential records at the heart of a congressional […]
David Levi and I were two of the three former federal judges who served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court. (Nancy Gertner was the other.) David and I co-authored an op-ed that appears in today’s Washington Post explaining our opposition to proposals to expand the size of the court and limit the terms […]
It was quite a week for hot-button issues in Washington, D.C. During the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court resolved two petitions in cases challenging S.B. 8—the Texas law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks—the D.C. Circuit decided cases touching on January 6, the travel ban, a mask mandate, and, of course, Entergy Arkansas’ […]
The big opinion this past week was Electronic Privacy Information Center v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 20-5364 (D.C. Cir. Nov. 30, 2021), in which the Court considered Buzzfeed’s appeal of a decision permitting DOJ to redact portions of the Mueller report that relate to individuals who were investigated but not charged by the Special […]
There were no new opinions last week, likely due to the Thanksgiving holiday. But that didn’t stop the court from issuing an interesting order on Tuesday, that likely led to some holiday-weekend work for a few attorneys. The case is Trump v. Thompson and it deals with the House investigation into the January 6th riots. […]
The D.C. Circuit published only one opinion this week, resolving a long-running suit that had become moot. The Court also announced that it will reopen for in-person arguments on December 1, 2021. Court watchers can find the protocols here. Members of the general public won’t be allowed to attend in-person, but can watch arguments on […]
The D.C. Circuit cleared out some long-running cases this week, releasing two opinions from three cases argued in September and December 2020, plus a third opinion in a case from this term. The two older cases drew dissents from Judge Millett. If you’re keeping count, that’s four cases, three opinions, and two dissents, which encompassed […]
In the “bad old days,” the D.C. Circuit was the butt of many a joke – deserved or not – about the sleep-inducing qualities of its opinions. When I was running the gauntlet of the nominations process, a White House lawyer asked me, in all seriousness, “Tom, how can you stand the thought of spending […]