Live blog of opinions | November 8, 2017
This live blog featured a discussion of the court's first decision in an argued case, Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago.
3rd & 7 37yd
3rd & 7 37yd
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So Amy thinks the odds are slightly higher than 0.0%. I'll just say that, given how important Gill is, and how likely it is to engender dissent, the odds of it coming out today are super low. Opinions that come out this quickly are almost certainly unanimous -- dissents slow the process down considerably.
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Another possibility for an opinion today is Hamer v. Neighborhood Services, which was argued on October 10. It has the feel of a Ginsburg opinion -- the question presented is whether Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5)(C) can deprive a court of appeals of jurisdiction over an appeal that is statutorily timely or whether it is instead is a nonjurisdictional claim-processing rule because it is not derived from a statute -- and she likes to try to get her first opinion out early.
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For those who like speculating about SCOTUS cases, we've partnered with Good Judgment, a forecasting platform. You can make forecasts in five major cases this term -- Gill, Jesner, Husted, Carpenter and Masterpiece: www.gjopen.com
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It seems like it would be hard to start an opinion with a 4-4 vote at conference. The style of an opinion usually varies dramatically according to whether it's a majority or dissent. And it's not even clear how you'd assign it -- a Justice would essentially have to write it in an entrepreneurial effort to drum up a vote from the other side. Cases that come out this early usually have no dissents, and re-argument implies dissent.
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It is unanimous. The Court reiterates that a time limit prescribed only in a court-made rule is not jurisdictional, which would require the court to dismiss the case. It is instead a mandatory claim-processing rule that can be waived if the other side does not waive it.
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Howard Wasserman from FIU Law will have our analysis in Hamer. Here is a link to the court's opinion: www.supremecourt.gov
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Because the Seventh Circuit in this case held that a time limit specified in a rule -- Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5)(c), which limits extensions of time to file a notice of appeal -- is jurisdictional, the decision below, which dismissed the appeal, is vacated.
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For the uninitiated, what's at stake in whether a rule is "jurisdictional" is typically whether there is ANY way to get around it if things go sideways. A non-jurisdictional rule can sometimes be avoided because the other side doesn't argue for it, because of fairness concerns, or the like. A jurisdictional rule affects the power of the court to hear the case, which means that if you break it, you are totally screwed -- end of story.
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That means we are likely to get orders on Monday; Monday is also marked on the calendar as a "non-argument" session, which means the justices (or at least some of them) will take the bench and in all likelihood admit new lawyers to the Supreme Court's bar. So we could in theory get another opinion next week, but I wouldn't count on it.