From the
front page of the WSJ:
Before the current limit was established in the 1990s, briefs were
capped at 50 pages, a rule dating back to when attorneys used
typewriters. According to a 2,600-word “short history” of the last rule
change prepared by a University of Pennsylvania law professor, lawyers
were skirting the page limit by squeezing the space between lines,
letters and words. So they decided a word limit would better discourage
verbiage.
A judicial advisory committee made up of judges,
lawyers and law professors selected by Chief Justice John Roberts now
says that page-to-word conversion miscalculated how many words were in
an average 50-page brief. The committee conducted a study finding that a
typical page runs about 250 words. It did a new calculation—250
multiplied by 50—to come up with the 12,500 limit.
Lawyers say
they’re skeptical of that logic. “Identifying a purported mathematical
error that occurred 15 years ago does not provide a sound basis to
change current policy,” wrote the Council of Appellate Lawyers, a
nationwide group affiliated with the American Bar Association.
Michael
Gans, clerk of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis,
who oversaw the word-count study, says the process couldn’t have been
more painstaking. It was carried out by a high-school graduate who
interned at his office and spent a recent summer in a cubicle counting
every single word of 200 printed-out briefs that served as the sample.
“I felt sorry for her, but that’s what she did all summer,” Mr. Gans said. “She still wants to go to law school.”
“It
is harder to write a short opinion than a long opinion,” said Judge
Silberman. “Perhaps that explains why some lawyers object. I think the
computer is a bit problematic. It’s too easy to write too much.”
Justice Sotomayor
spoke yesterday at Davidson:
She told a basketball court of seated students that she’d spoken at
“countless” colleges and universities, and Davidson was the first school
to seat students “front and center.”
Pointing to alumni and townspeople in the bleachers, she said: “Generally those guys are down here.”
The students cheered.
Sotomayor,
the court’s third woman and first Hispanic justice, spoke honestly
about her life and how her experiences have affected her nearly 25 years
as a judge.
She was raised in public housing projects in New
York’s South Bronx, primarily by her mother when her father suddenly
died when she was 9.
After high school, she earned a scholarship
to Princeton University, where “when I arrived, I thought I was an alien
– not in a different land, but in a different world.”
“The people
there had a better education than I did then,” she said. “They were
taking spring breaks and flying places and they were traveling to
Europe. Europe was a place I thought I’d never see.”
***
She said the current court could use more diversity of experiences.
All its justices went to Ivy League schools, most are from the Northeast
and none were defense lawyers before they took the bench. Few were
small firm practitioners and many were academic lawyers. None, except
for Sotomayor, had state government experience.
“That’s a bad
thing,” she said. “We’re being asked to make decisions that affect every
aspect of life. We’re reviewing state criminal law convictions every
single day. It’s valuable to have someone there who can explain some of
that.”
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article13844528.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article13844528.html#storylink=cpy
Oh yeah, and two terror brothers pleaded yesterday before Beth Bloom.
From Paula McMahon:
Two brothers from Oakland Park pleaded guilty to federal terrorism
charges Thursday, admitting they plotted a terrorist attack on landmarks
in New York City and later assaulted two deputy U.S. Marshals while in
custody.
Raees Alam Qazi, 22, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 32, both
pleaded guilty in federal court in Miami to one count of conspiring to
provide support to terrorists and conspiring to assault two federal
employees. The younger brother pleaded guilty to an additional charge of
attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida.
The
Qazi brothers, who wore beige prison scrubs and were handcuffed,
shackled and under tight security in court, both said "Guilty" when
asked how they wanted to plead. They said little more than "Yes, ma'am"
and "No, ma'am" in response to the judge's questions. Both men have
thick beards, Sheheryar Qazi's hair was closely shaved and the younger
brother's hair is about the same length as when he was arrested.
