Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, January 27

Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send a quick note to either (1) Dan Real at DReal@Creighton.edu or on Twitter @Daniel_L_Real or (2) Catharine Du Bois at DuBoisLegalWriting@gmail.com or on Twitter @CLDLegalWriting.

U.S. Supreme Court News:

According to Empirical SCOTUS, multiple measures suggest that the Supreme Court is now less efficient.  The 112 days between the first oral argument and the first decision in an orally argued case marked the longest time period ever taken by the justices for that action.  More here.

On Monday, the Court dismissed an appeal in a previously-argued case involving the question of whether attorney-client privilege protects all or none of the advice given when a client confers with a lawyer and receives both legal and nonlegal advice.  As Stephen Gillers noted this week at SCOTUSblog, the dismissal likely does not reflect that the Court has lost interest in resolving the persistent issue, but, rather, only that this particular case was not the appropriate vehicle for resolving the issue.  More here. 

U.S. Circuit Court News:

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has proposed new filing deadline rules that would change the court's filing deadline from midnight to 5:00 p.m., for electronic and in-person filings.  The response has been largely negative from practitioners.  More here.

State Appellate Court News:

The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled this week that the Colorado Baker who won a partial U.S. Supreme Court victory after refusing to make a gay couple's wedding cake was not entitled to refuse service to a customer seeking a cake celebrating gender transition.  The court ruled that the cake was not a form of speech and that the state law making it illegal to refuse to provide services to people based on protected characteristics does not violate the business owners' right to practice or express religion.  More here. Opinion here.