Yeah my home state is in the Eighth and the local ACLU affiliate regularly files amicus briefs that are useless at best, counterproductive at worst. If they were smart they would seek out liberal counterclerks who speak fluent Fed Soc, at least in red jurisdictions, but instead I’d guess that they’d be very skeptical of such people.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 8:59 pmthere is a zero percent chance the GOP would give a promotion to counsel of record to the loser of the biggest SCOTUS case of the centuryAnonymous User wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 7:45 pmAlso, let's not pretend any kind of oral argument was going to change the minds of those six hacks on Dobbs.
Democrats have such a loser's attitude -- fatalism, zero accountability, 'we wouldn't have won anyway, deck's stacked against us' etc
like, what is Rikelman's job, if not to persuade Brett Kavanaugh (who, to be clear, is a piece of shit) to keep Roe/Casey alive?
mostly unrelated - I remember a few years ago reading a CA8 amicus brief by either the ACLU or CRR in a reproductive rights case, and the theme was like, the importance of abortion access to poor Black women. intersectionality nonsense that would at best be ignored by the panel, at worst actively annoy/undermine an otherwise semi-persuadable boomer judge. some of the litigation staff at the advocacy orgs (and law firms doing pro bono work) are just total trash -- no idea how to tailor an argument for the given audience.
Though I think Dobbs was a case where advocacy obviously did not matter. There just isn’t a colorable Fed Soc friendly argument for Roe on the merits so stare decisis stuff is the best you can do. Rikelman is a mediocre advocate by SCOTUS standards, but you can’t blame her at all. And conservatives don’t have any recent losses on this scale, so there is no comparator, but I don’t think they’d have any compunctions elevating someone on the losing end of one.