Supreme Court – Page 34

Whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19 requires dismissal of an Administrative Procedure Act action challenging a federal agency’s compliance with statutory requirements governing federal agency decisions, for failure to join a non-federal entity that would benefit from the challenged agency action and cannot be joined without consent.

Lower court materials here.

UPDATE:

Navajo Transitional BIO

Arizona Public Service BIO

FMC Corp. v. Shoshone-Bannock Tribes Cert Petition [Updated]

March 23, 2020January 4, 2021Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here:

cert-petition.pdf

Questions presented:

1. Whether the Ninth Circuit correctly holds that tribal jurisdiction over nonmembers is established whenever a Montana exception is met, or whether, as the Seventh and Eighth Circuits have held, a court must also determine that the exercise of such jurisdiction stems from the tribe’s inherent authority to set conditions on entry, preserve tribal self-government, or control internal relations.

2. Whether the Ninth Circuit has construed the Montana exceptions to swallow the general rule that tribes lack jurisdiction over nonmembers.

Lower court materials here.

Update:

Brief in Opposition

US Invitation Brief

FMC Supplemental Brief

SCOTUS Denies Cert in Cases Involving Pinoleville Pomo Nation & Chemehuevi Indian Tribe

March 9, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is today’s order list.

The Court denied cert in James v. JW Gaming Development LLC (materials) and McMahon v. Chemehuevi Indian Tribe (materials).

New Scholarship: “The Loudest Voice at the Supreme Court”

March 9, 2020March 9, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Darcy Covert & A.J. Wang have posted “The Loudest Voice at the Supreme Court: The Solicitor General’s Dominance of Amicus Oral Argument” on SSRN. The NYTs profiled the article here.

Here is the abstract:

Over the last century, amicus participation in oral argument at the Supreme Court has become common, but only for one litigant: the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States (“OSG”). Between the 2010 and 2017 Terms, the Court granted only 8 of 26 motions for amicus oral argument by litigants other than OSG. During that time, it granted 252—all but 1—of such motions by OSG. Since the early 2000s, OSG has often argued more frequently in a Term as an amicus than as a party.

This Article presents the first history of amicus oral argument and how OSG came to dominate this practice. Drawing on an original database of every motion for amicus oral argument filed from 1889 through 2017, we offer the first quantitative history of the practice of amicus oral argument before the Court. We supplement this with a qualitative account of the historical and modern use of amicus oral argument based on archival research and interviews with frequent Supreme Court litigators, including current and former members of OSG. We find that the Court grants OSG virtually unlimited access to amicus oral argument without regard to the strength of the federal interest or the political nature of a given case.

The Court’s special solicitude towards OSG has profound consequences. The Solicitor General already occupies a special role at the Court as the “Tenth Justice.” We argue that OSG’s seemingly unlimited ability to appear before the Court systematically biases the perspectives heard at the Court and therefore undermines due process principles and the adversarial process. We conclude with a proposal for reform.