imported post
Doug Huffman wrote:
Perhaps noting that consent must be granted by all parties to submit will suggest their weight - that and due judicial dilligence. They are subject to SCOTUS Rules of procedure and Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The rules are in a .pdf on the SCOTUS web site.
Consent is almost always a blanket consent given at the time of the Merits Briefs. The parties to the controversy have almost no control over who files and generally only suggest the topics that they address. In this, Alan Gura has done a remarkable job of coordinating the amici to address specific issues.
Some notes on what's happening here, to those who may not be familiar.
There have been 20 amici briefs filed for the petitioner (DC) and 47 amici for the respondent (Heller). The most filed briefs ever was a case called, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), where 32 amici filed to affirm and 46 filed to reverse.
So while this case did not set a record, it is instructive to note that a wide variety of interests have filed. This simply means to the Court that the case is very important to a whole lot of people.
So what does the Court do with all these briefs? Each Justice has a number of clerks. They will be assigned to read the briefs and submit a summary to the Justice for whom they clerk. The Justices themselves will read the individual briefs, should they interest the Justice, based upon the summaries of their clerks.
Another thing to note, is that each of the respondents amici have addressed one or more of the petitioners amici briefs in rebuttal and some have expanded upon what the respondent was saying. The initial Merits Briefs are limited to 15,000 words, including citations and footnotes. The amici are limited to 9,000 words.
So we have at the present, something like 633K words written on the meaning of the 2A, or a volume (or three) of legal work containing approximately 2500 written pages.
On top of all this, the SCOTUS has some rather peculiar printing standards. IIRC, each amicus must file seven copies, with an average cost of 2K for each copy, plus the time the associated attorneys took to prepare the brief - say, 20 billable hours each, minimum. Add to this the costs of the Merits Briefs themselves, and you are looking at a multi-million dollar endeavor.
And we have yet to reach the Orals stage.
Ask any Constitutional scholar (regardless of their actual views) about this case and you will get the impression that this is the single most important case to come before the Supreme Court in decades. Perhaps in our lifetimes. Most of us, here, know this. Yet it is instructive to look at how others view this case. Scholars; Legal Analysts; Public Policy Think Tanks; State Governments; City Governments; Federal Agencies - all agree with us. This case is
THE most important Constitutional Issue, perhaps ever.
All of this and more, yet it is only a single footstep in the move to take back our rights. A decision in our favor will be but the first of many cases to nail down the extent of the RKBA (what is referred to as the scope of the right).
A decision for D.C. will, at first, do nothing more than preserve the status quo. It will however, open the way to the most Draconian anti-gun laws imaginable. A decision for D.C. will in effect, complete the shredding of the Constitution that we have been witnessing these last 70 or so years.
