Merits Brief in Scott v. Harris: As readers of my now-dormant solo blog may recall, my 2-year post-clerkship prohibition on Supreme Court practice ended in July; since then, I have been looking for interesting cases to help with on a pro bono basis. In light of that, I am pleased to report that I joined the team representing the petitioner Timothy Scott at the merits stage of Scott v. Harris, No. 05-1631, a Fourth Amendment and qualified immunity case involving a high-speed car chase.

  The Court granted cert in late October, and we filed our merits brief last week. I have posted a copy of our brief here. You can download a copy of the petition for certiorari (together with the lower court opinion) here. I plan to post additional briefs as more are available, and I may also post the video of the pursuit that was taken from Scott's squad car. (As this post involves pending litigation, I am not opening the usual comment thread. Readers with comments can e-mail me at my gwu.edu account.)

Briefs in Scott v. Harris: As I've mentioned here before, I'm working pro bono on a pending Supreme Court case, Scott v. Harris, set for argument on Monday, February 26th. The case involves a civil action for damages under the Fourth Amenment after a high-speed automobile chase. I'm helping to represent the defendant Deputy Sheriff Timothy Scott, and we recently filed our reply brief. I wanted to post it along with some of the other briefs that were filed in the case.

  I don't have all of the briefs, but here is what I have. First, the merits briefs of the parties:

Brief for Petitioner Scott
Brief for Respondent Harris
Reply Brief for Petitioner Scott

  Next, amicus briefs filed in support of petitioner Scott:

Amicus Brief of United States
Amicus Brief of States
Amicus Brief of City Organizations

  Finally, amicus briefs in support of respondent Harris:

Amicus Brief of ACLU
Amicus Brief of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

Oral Argument in Scott v. Harris: Tomorrow the Supreme Court is holding oral argument in Scott v. Harris, the Fourth Amendment excessive force case that I have blogged about (and for which I am co-counsel for the petitioner). Unfortunately I won't be at the argument: My efforts to return to DC from Chicago today after the Federalist Society student symposium at Northwestern have been stymied by the major storm that hit both Chicago and the DC area, which means that I won't be able to get a flight back to DC until Monday night at the earliest. I hope to blog about the argument when the Court releases the transcript tomorrow afternoon, but I may be en route all day so it's hard to know. (It would be particularly nice to have the audio of the argument to listen to as well, as I could give you a more informed take on what the Justices were thinking, but the Court does not release audio tapes of most arguments until enough time passes that no one cares anymore.) Meanwhile, there has been a lot of press coverage of the case today, both in print and on TV. Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor offers his take here.