THE HIGH PRICE OF GETTING TO SCOTUS | Court Rules Trump’s Financial Records Must Be Turned Over
November 4, 2019
THE PRICE YOU PAY
|Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reports on the 12-year battle of JOHN STURGEON to travel on a forbidden hovercraft through Alaska’s national parkland to his favorite hunting spot. Turns out, it takes a pretty penny to take on the federal courts (not once, but twice) and get the Supreme Court to review your case. The Washington Post reviewed the details of the financial costs of Sturgeon’s legal fight and found that among donors to his cause were the Alaska Wildlife and Conservation Fund, the National Rifle Association, the Alaska Conservative Trust, national and international hunting groups, hundreds of ordinary Alaskans and one very wealthy one.
NOT HIM, YOU
|This morning, a federal appeals court ruled that PRESIDENT TRUMP’S accounting firm must turn over eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns to Manhattan prosecutors. The three-judge panel said that because it was the president’s firm that was subpoenaed for the documents, the question of the president’s immunity is irrelevant. Benjamin Weiser with The New York Times notes that the case seems to be well on its way to the Supreme Court.
A TERRIBLE RATIO
|Jordan S. Rubin and Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson with Bloomberg Law preview November at SCOTUS and point out that three of the 28 lawyers who’ll argue at the this month are women, and five of the men who’ll take the podium have already done so this term.
ICYMI
|Law professors Tonja Jacobi, Timothy R. Johnson, Eve Ringsmuth and Matthew Sag analyzed how well the Supreme Court’s new two-minute rule has been working — and it seems to be so far so good. In The Washington Post they explain that although there hasn’t been 100% compliance with the new rule, attorneys’ overall word counts are up and so is their pace of advocacy. They write, “These results, while preliminary, suggest the importance of comparing how both advocates and justices are operating under the guideline. Although the new rule has not completely silenced the justices, attorneys have received much more time for an opening statement than in the previous two terms — an average of 111 seconds as compared to about 60 seconds in the previous terms. This should make the attorneys’ arguments more coherent, with attorneys gaining in their tug-of-war with justices.”
YAS GORG
|Greg Stohr with Bloomberg reports that the Supreme Court agreed to consider stripping the SEC of “its power to recoup illegal profits from wrongdoers.” He writes, “The appeal by Charles Liu and Xin Wang contends that ‘disgorgement’ isn’t one of the remedies Congress has authorized the SEC to seek against people who violate the nation’s securities fraud laws. The California couple is fighting a $27 million disgorgement order.”