Supreme Court Discussion of Academic Amicus Brief

An academic amicus brief got heavy attention in the Supreme Court today (and no, it wasn’t Steve Sachs’s — that case will be argued Wednesday). As Lyle Denniston explains at SCOTUSBlog, in Madigan v. Levin, an age discrimination case from the Seventh Circuit, “a brief that had been filed by law professors who specialize in the arcane field of court procedure had obviously drawn the Court’s attention,” and the Court spent several minutes at the start of argument seriously questioning the Seventh Circuit’s jurisdiction.

For those interested in this “arcane field” of pendent appellate jurisdiction, the brief is by Steve Vladeck, and a link is here. The transcript is here, and discussion of jurisdiction starts on page 3. The argument in the brief overlaps heavily with Vladeck’s recent article, Pendent Appellate Bootstrapping, in the Green Bag. Who says legal scholarship is irrelevant to what courts do?

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