From Law.com (thanks to Mike McBride)
Compared to the drama surrounding which lawyer would argue before the Supreme Court Monday in the case of Carcieri v. Kempthorne, the actual argument came as something of an anticlimax.
As reported by Legal Times in recent weeks, Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri had hired former solicitor general Theodore Olson for a reported $200,000 to argue for the state in the Indian land dispute. But Joseph Larisa, a private lawyer for the town of Charlestown, R.I., where the land in question sits, refused to turn over the reins to Olson, asserting that his handling of the case for the last 10 years made him the most qualified to argue before the justices.
The tussle, which earned Larisa a following on the blogosphere as the David up against the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Goliath, ended Friday — just three days before the argument — when Court Clerk William Suter told the Rhode Island parties to work it out or forfeit their argument time altogether. Larisa bowed out, and Olson spent an intense weekend making final preparations.
At the early-afternoon argument Larisa sat at the counsel table, but there were two lawyers seated between him and Olson. Perhaps sharpened by the rivalry, Olson was at his best, delivering a focused, simple argument on the issue before the Court — whether the Interior secretary has the power to take land into trust for Indian tribes that were not recognized at the time when the Indian Reorganization Act took effect in 1934. He hammered home rules of statutory construction to support his narrow reading of the law that would defeat the claim of the Narragansett Indians. To rule in favor of the tribe, he said, would be a “very broad grant of authority.”
Both themes pushed the buttons of most of the justices, and his arguments were ones that did not depend in large measure on the specific history or facts of the dispute between the state and the tribe — facts that a hometown lawyer might have emphasized. In that sense, it may have been a case where a Supreme Court veteran like Olson actually was a better vessel for a winning argument than the lawyer who argued the case all along. In fact it did appear that Olson carried the day for the state, though that may not be surprising; this Court often rules against Indian claims.
Outside the Court afterward, Larisa was asked how he thought it went. He smiled and said, “Ted did great, as expected.” Would he have argued it differently? “Maybe a little bit, but by and large the same,” said Larisa, who seemed confident of victory.
Turtle Talk 