Appellate Advocacy Blog

Advice to 1Ls

Because my teaching typically focuses on appellate advocacy, I rarely teach 1Ls. In fact, I have NEVER taught a first year legal writing class--that is until this year.  Yes, this year I will be teaching a fall section of first year legal writing. Although I will miss teaching my upper year course, I am excited to help these 1Ls start their legal education.

Now, many 1L students come into law school with limited knowledge on what to expect (and an overinflated sense of how they will perform). When I was a law student, I could count the number of lawyers I knew on one hand (using one finger). I benefit from good mentors during law school and lots of advice (some good, some not so great).

I have shared in the past my advice to incoming law students. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. I would love, however, to hear advice from practitioners or relatively recent graduates.  Please feel free to share in the comments your best piece of advice for incoming 1Ls. 

Thanks!

Sometimes a Reply Brief Should Explore a New Path

Several times over the past couple of years, I agreed to join an appellate team in a case to help finish the reply brief and make the argument. Its not the optimal way to take on an appeal. Limited time, even when an extension is available and granted, may prevent mastering a complex record. The opening brief might pursue a theory or theories of the case that you find weak or contrary to precedent – and the responding brief may have exploited those flaws.

So why take on a potentially sinking ship? Perhaps you believe that the party whose team you have joined ought to prevail, or that you may help avoid setting a bad precedent. You may even have a theory of the case that you believe capable of prevailing that has gone unmentioned.

The biggest obstacle at that point to reorienting the case to a potentially winning argument is a reply brief should only respond to an opponent’s arguments and not launch new ones. New arguments raised for the first time in a reply brief are often forfeited and potentially waived. The terms forfeited and waived have different meanings for an appellate court. Forfeiture generally means a failure to make the timely assertion of a right or argument. Waiver means the intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or argument.

Last year, an en banc majority of the Eleventh Circuit discussed the difference. The decision asserted that courts may “resurrect” forfeited issues when prudence suggests it is necessary.[1] Prudential practice may also dictate otherwise, the Court stated, but “the conditions under which we will excuse it are up to us as an appellate court.”[2] The Court thus claimed a great deal of unfettered discretion.

Counsel in the position of joining the team at the reply stage should provide the court with a basis to exercise that discretion by finding a way to shoehorn the argument into the reply. Often, I have found, the reply brief makes a point that provides an ideal jumping off point for the new legal theory. It may be the citation of a case that supports the theory, an opponent’s argument that opens the door to the theory as a response, or the responsive brief’s claim that the opening brief ignored a point that the trial court made. More often than not, when I have used that tactic, the appellate court has accepted it and found it dispositive. Even if you are not an eleventh-hour addition to a case, read the responsive brief for opportunities to explore a new theme that might beat the path to victory.

 

[1] United States v. Campbell, 26 F.4th 860, 872 (11th Cir.) (en banc) (citations omitted), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 95 (2022).

[2] Id.

Making your point at different levels

For my appellate brief writing class, I choose a pending SCOTUS case for the students to write a brief for. This past year, I chose two trademark cases: Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts v. Goldsmith and Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. Justice Kagan wrote for the majority in Jack Daniels and a dissent (with Chief Justice Roberts joining) in Andy Warhol Foundation. 

I was doubly interested in reading these opinions. First, I had more than surface-level knowledge of the cases, as I had focused on them at a pretty granular level in my teaching. Second, I hoped that, given the fun facts and potential for cultural references in each case, Justice Kagan would write at least one of them. When I saw that she and Roberts were together on the Andy Warhol dissent, I was just a bit more excited--it's not too often that the court's two best writers team up.

As I read the Andy Warhol dissent, I found myself feeling something that I never thought I would feel--that Justice Kagan was overdoing it on the cultural references. I have a very high tolerance for such things, but I felt it being tested. Then I realized what she was doing: using form to make an implicit point that she made in other ways explicitly.

The central premise of her dissent is that all artists creatively borrow from others' work--she calls it "transformative copying." She explicitly makes this point and gives many examples, from Shakespeare to Stravinsky.

She also makes the same point implicitly, by creatively copying others' phrases to build her own prose. Just a few examples:

"A picture (or two), as the saying goes, is worth a thousand words, so here is what those magazines published:"

"'Nothing comes from nothing, nothing every could,'  said songwriter Richard Rodgers, maybe thinking not only about love and marriage but also how the Great American Songbook arose from vaudeville, ragtime, the blues, and jazz."

"[A]s Irving Berlin put the point, 'songs make history, and history makes songs.'"

"He started with an old photo, but he created a new new thing." (FN: "I have to admit, I stole that last phrase from Michael Lewis's The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (2014). I read the book some time ago, and the phrase stuck with me (as phrases often do). I wouldn't have thoght of it on my own.")

"'No man but a blockhead,' Samuel Johnson once noted, 'ever wrote[] except for money.'" 

"And there's the rub. (Yes, that's mostly Shakespeare)."

Justice Kagan was showing her point, not just telling it: an artist (here, a writer) can take others' works and put them together in a new way to create a new thing. 

What to take from this? Points are more persuasive when you can make them at different levels because it's going to stick with your reader longer and has a higher chance of being persuasive. We'll not all be able to pull it off like Justice Kagan, but (attempted) imitation is (at least one of) the sincerest forms of flattery.

Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, July 21, 2023

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 [email protected] or on Twitter @Daniel_L_Real or (2) Catharine Du Bois at [email protected] or on Twitter @CLDLegalWriting.

US Supreme Court Opinions and News

• The Supreme Court has finished releasing opinions for the 2022-23 term and, as usual, there are a number of Supreme Court term wrap-ups and commentaries on the term: The Heritage Foundation's Scholars and Scribes Review the Rulings, Adam Feldman’s Empirical SCOTUS, USAToday, NPR, and BloombergLaw.

• And looking forward, the Court released the October 2023 oral argument calendar. Here are a couple of places to find the cases (and some commentary) on the docket for 2023-24:  Oyez.org, SCOTUSBlog, and BloombergLaw.

State Court Opinions and News

• The California Supreme Court rejected a 2022 Supreme Court ruling on a California Labor law. The Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) allows employees to sue employers, individually or collectively, in the name of the state. The Supreme Court held that PAGA violated the rights of businesses where the contract requires workers to submit to individual arbitration rather than filing suit. The California Supreme Court rejected that interpretation, stating “the highest court of each State … remains the final arbiter of what is state law.” The California Supreme Court ruled that, even though the Act may require workers to arbitrate their own claims, PAGA also allows workers to join co-workers to sue on behalf of the state. See ruling and a report from the San Francisco  Chronicle.

• The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a law that eliminated cash bail, allowing a new system to begin. Illinois will become the first state in the U.S. to end cash bail for criminal defendants awaiting trial. Governor Pritzker supports the new law and the decision, saying ““We can now move forward with historic reform to ensure pretrial detainment is determined by the danger an individual poses to the community instead of by their ability to pay their way out of jail.” The challenge to the law argued that the changes were unconstitutional. But the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that “The Illinois Constitution of 1970 does not mandate that monetary bail is the only means to ensure criminal defendants appear for trials or the only means to protect the public. Our constitution creates a balance between the individual rights of defendants and the individual rights of crime victims.” See the order and reports from The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Judge Michael’s Brief-Writing Tips, Part 1

One of my exciting (yes, really) summer projects is to help with a Legal Writing textbook, including drafting a chapter on trial briefs.  In looking at state and local rules on what trial briefs should contain, I found a great list of ten brief-writing tips from the Hon. Terrence L. Michael, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma and a member of the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Tenth Circuit.

On his chamber’s webpage, https://www.oknb.uscourts.gov/content/honorable-terrence-l-michael, Judge Michael has a list of his “Policies and Procedures,” including a document called, Ten Tips for Effective Brief Writing (at Least With Respect to Briefs Submitted to Judge Michael), https://www.oknb.uscourts.gov/sites/oknb/files/briefwritingtips.pdf.  Judge Michael is a respected and prolific author and speaker, and he’s even been on stage as a singer at Carnegie Hall, so I was not surprised to find his list of tips both engaging and fun.  See generally https://www.law.com/clecenter/online-course-catalog/you-want-me-to-do-what-the-dilemma-of-trying-to-interpret-and-follow-appellate-precedent-6056/.

Of course, some of the judge’s tips are applicable to Bankruptcy Court and trial filings, but most apply well in appellate writing too.  Therefore, I’m sharing all ten of his tips, although I’ve deleted points especially applicable to trial or bankruptcy practice. 

Judge Michael begins: 

I was once asked (OK, I once wished that I had been asked) what judges look for in written submissions. After considerable thought, and with some trepidation, I have tried to set some general principles down in writing. 

He cautions: “What follows is a list of ten ideas/suggestions for your consideration. I do not purport to speak for any of my colleagues; this list, for better or worse, is my own.”

For this post, I’ll highlight Tips One through Five, and next time, I’ll discuss Tips Six to Ten.

Tip 1.  Remember, Your Goal Is to Persuade, Not to Argue.  Judge Michael explains, “[w]e all have had people come up to us at cocktail parties or family reunions and say, “’You know, I would make a good lawyer because I just love to argue.”’  He says, those statements “could not be further from the truth [as g]uests on the Jerry Springer show argue [while] Lawyers persuade.”  Thus, the judge reminds us the idea “behind an effective brief is to have the audience (the judge and/or the law clerk) read the brief and say to themselves, ‘“why are these parties fighting over such an obvious issue?”’ because the points are actually persuasive, and not just argumentative.

Tip 2.  Know thy Audience.  Judge Michael notes that most bankruptcy judges write and publish opinions, and some even provide links of those opinions on their webpages.  While appellate judges do not necessarily provide links to their opinions, we can certainly search for them.  As the judge explains, “[w]e publish those opinions in order to give you some idea of what we have done and why [and w]e try to be consistent.”  Therefore, judges find it “extremely frustrating (and remember, a frustrated judge is not easily persuaded) to have counsel in either written or oral argument raise an issue and be completely ignorant of the fact that we decided that issue in a published opinion last week, last month or last year.”  Moreover, not knowing what your panel previously decided “is also embarrassing, both for you and for us.”

Tip 3.  Know thy Circuit.  Sadly, Judge Michael has to remind us his court is “bound by published decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit,” even though he “ know[s] this sounds obvious,” because “on more than one occasion, [he] had an attorney ask [him] to follow a decision from another circuit which is directly contrary to controlling Tenth Circuit authority.”  Avoid “creative” arguments to use sister circuit cases when your circuit really has decided the issue. 

Tip 4.  Know the Facts of the Cases You Cite.  When teaching first-year students, I often caution them not to take quotes from cases either out of context or without context.  Judge Michael’s Tip 4 says we must resist the temptation to insert what seem to be “magic words” of these unconnected quotes into our briefs.  According to the judge, “insert[ing] that quotation ([he] call[s] them “sound bites”) into your brief and say[ing], “see, judge, other courts agree with me so I must be right” is actually “a dangerous practice.”  Why?  Because courts “decide real disputes” and “[r]eal disputes are fact driven.”  Thus, we must “[b]e wary of the case which is factually dissimilar to yours, but has a great sound bite.”  Instead, we should “be sure” to explain “why the factually dissimilar case is applicable to your situation.” 

In another point I often raise with first-year students, the judge reminds us to “be cognizant of the difference between the holding of a case and the dicta contained therein,” as “[m]ost judges (this one included) find little value in dicta unless we already agree with it.”

Tip 5.  Shorter Is Better.  When I was in appellate practice, my clients often asked me to ghost write “record-protecting” trial briefs or include weaker issues on appeal to preserve them for high court review.  Deciding which issues might prevail one day and which you should exclude because they are weak is a truly lawyerly task.  In each case, you will balance the needs of the client—especially an institutional client—to raise issues against the persuasive value of focusing on just the best arguments.  Judge Michael suggests we balance on the side of fewer arguments.  He states:  “Thurgood Marshall once said that in all his years on the Supreme Court, every case came down to a single issue. If that is true, why do most briefs contain arguments covering virtually every conceivable issue (good, bad or indifferent) which could arise in the case”? 

The judge explains, “[w]eak arguments detract from the entire presentation.”  He offers this great advice:   “If you feel compelled in a particular case to include everything including the kitchen sink, maybe you ought to take another look at settling the case.”  Good advice, indeed. 

Happy writing!

All I Need to Know About Flow I Learned from Pink

We’ve all read legal writing that is stilted and choppy.  Though it may not affect the validity of the arguments made, it does make reading uncomfortable and detracts from the writer’s ethos.  While short sentences come in handy when seeking to emphasize a point, using only short, choppy sentences can give the appearance of incapacity for complex thought[i]—not exactly the impression you want your reader to have.

The solution to choppiness is to increase flow.  “Writing flow refers to the pace, cadence, or rhythm of a piece of writing.”[ii]  And, though there are many ways to increase flow, dovetailing is an easy one to incorporate, and it has the added benefit of ensuring sound logic in your argument.  Dovetailing gets its name from a carpentry joint with overlapping pieces shaped like—you guessed it—a dove’s tail.  As a writing concept, dovetailing is “the overlap of language between two sentences that creates a bridge between those two sentences.”[iii]  This overlap is accomplished by a combination of summation and repetition. And the musical artist Pink is a lyrical carpenter.

In her song “Try,” Pink uses the following dovetailed lyrics:

Why do we fall in love so easy,
even when it's not right?

Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame.

Where there is a flame, someone’s bound to get burned.

But just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die.

You gotta get up and try, try, try.

First, she uses summation by replacing the broader concept of “fall[ing] in love so easy, even when it’s not right” with the single word “desire,” thereby connecting the two ideas.  Then, she then uses lots of repetition to connect the lines in the chorus:  flame/flame, burned/burns, you’re/you.

These tools also work well in legal writing to help build arguments and explain the writer’s reasoning.  Consider the following example of summation, followed by repetition, from Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 681 (1986), where the Court held that the First Amendment did not protect lewd and indecent speech made on school grounds:

The role and purpose of the American public school system were well described by two historians, who stated: “[P]ublic education must prepare pupils for citizenship in the Republic.... It must inculcate the habits and manners of civility as values in themselves conducive to happiness and as indispensable to the practice of self-government in the community and the nation.” C. Beard & M. Beard, New Basic History of the United States 228 (1968). In Ambach v. Norwick, 441 U.S. 68, 76–77, 99 S.Ct. 1589, 1594, 60 L.Ed.2d 49 (1979), we echoed the essence of this statement of the objectives of public education as the “inculcat[ion of] fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system.”

These fundamental values of “habits and manners of civility” essential to a democratic society must, of course, include tolerance of divergent political and religious views, even when the views expressed may be unpopular. But these “fundamental values” must also take into account consideration of the sensibilities of others, and, in the case of a school, the sensibilities of fellow students.

(Emphasis added.)

The Court first summarized the identified role and purpose of the public school system, along with its objectives, as the “fundamental values of ‘habits and manners of civility.’”  It then repeated the phrase “fundamental values” to introduce a new concept—that consideration for the sensibilities of others must also be factored into the equation.

Here is another example from Fraser demonstrating repetition:

This Court's First Amendment jurisprudence has acknowledged limitations on the otherwise absolute interest of the speaker in reaching an unlimited audience where the speech is sexually explicit and the audience may include children. In Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 88 S.Ct. 1274, 20 L.Ed.2d 195 (1968), this Court upheld a New York statute banning the sale of sexually oriented material to minors, even though the material in question was entitled to First Amendment protection with respect to adults. And in addressing the question whether the First Amendment places any limit on the authority of public schools to remove books from a public school library, all Members of the Court, otherwise sharply divided, acknowledged that the school board has the authority to remove books that are vulgar. Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 871–872, 102 S.Ct. 2799, 2814–2815, 73 L.Ed.2d 435 (1982) (plurality opinion); id., at 879–881, 102 S.Ct., at 2814–2815 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in part and in judgment); id., at 918–920, 102 S.Ct., at 2834–2835 (REHNQUIST, J., dissenting). These cases recognize the obvious concern on the part of parents, and school authorities acting in loco parentis, to protect children—especially in a captive audience—from exposure to sexually explicit, indecent, or lewd speech.

Fraser, 478 U.S. at 684 (emphasis added).

Notice how the first sentence ends with a reference to “sexually explicit” speech before an audience that “may include children,” and the second sentence begins by discussing a ban on the sale of “sexually oriented material to minors.”  Though the wording is not a verbatim repetition, the ideas are the same—the legal implications of exposing youth to lewd material.  The second sentence then ends with a reference to the First Amendment, noting how the same sales ban would be impermissible with respect to adults, while the third sentence begins with a reference to the First Amendment but ends in its application to children in public schools, thus emphasizing the distinction in the First Amendment’s application to youth and adults.  The Court concludes that the overarching goal identified in the cases is “to protect children . . . from exposure to sexually explicit, indecent, or lewd speech.”

By using dovetailing, the Court was able to build the following argument:  It is unquestionably permissible to restrict speech where children might be accidentally exposed to lewd material. Because accidental exposure may be regulated, it follows that intentional exposure through the sale of such material to youth may be regulated.  Because intentional exposure of youth to lewd material by commercial transaction may be regulated, intentional provision of lewd material to youth free of cost may also be regulated.  And, given that the First Amendment would likely prohibit the same regulations with respect to lewd material and adults, the common thread of these cases is to keep lewd material away from youth.  In other words, the Court used dovetailing to establish the principle that the First Amendment does not protect the provision of lewd material to youth in any form.

By leading the reader each step of the way and connecting the links in the chain of reasoning through repetition and summation, the Court made its ultimate conclusion inescapable.  Thus, dovetailing not only improves the flow of writing but also increases the persuasion of the writer’s argument and ensures sound reasoning.

Looking for more ways to increase your flow? 

• Consider using temporal words, such as “first,” “next,” “then,” and “later,” to orient your reader to time.
• Vary your sentence length, using short sentences for emphasis.
• Add in transition words such as “therefore,” “consequently,” or “accordingly” to help your reader draw connections between assertions.
• Structure your paragraphs around topic sentences.

 

[i] Mark Damen, A Guide to Writing in History and Classics, available at https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/WritingGuide/05choppy.htm.

[ii]MasterClass, Writing Flow: How to Make Your Writing Flow, available at https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-flow.

[iii] Laurel Currie Oates and Anne Enquist, The Legal Writing Handbook:  Practice Book, Ex. 23.1A (Aspen 4th ed. 2002).

The meaning of "and"

I am on a great American road trip for the next two weeks, so I am sharing this post on statutory interpretation from 2020.

Almost three years ago, I posted about a statutory interpretation case out of the Washington Supreme Court that addressed the thorny question of whether a riding lawn mower is a vehicle. It seems that Washington State is at it again with this fascinating case out of the Ninth Circuit.  The question--Does "and" mean "and" or does it mean "or?"  At issue--who exercises jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit crimes on the Yakima Nation's reservation.

The history of the case is rather complicated, but the key provision is quite simple.  At the request of the Yakima Nation, Washington Governor Jay Inslee issued a Proclamation in 2014 that "retroceeded" to the federal government jurisdiction over certain civil and criminal matters that occurred on the Yakima Nation Reservation.  Paragraph two of the Proclamation stated (my emphasis):

Within the exterior boundaries of the Yakama Reservation, the State shall retrocede, in part, civil and criminal jurisdiction in Operation of Motor Vehicles on Public Streets, Alleys, Roads, and Highways cases in the following manner: Pursuant to RCW 37.12.010(8), the State shall retain jurisdiction over civil causes of action involving non-Indian plaintiffs, non-Indian defendants, and non-Indian victims; the State shall retain jurisdiction over criminal offenses involving non-Indian defendants and non-Indian victims.

In an accompanying letter, Governor Inslee explained that the "and" in that last sentence meant "and/or," and, according to the opinion asked the Interior Department  to make that clear when it accepted the Proclamation. It didn't.  Over the intervening years, there were several interpretations of the language by different parts of the federal government and the court system.  The most lasting interpretation appears to be a memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel, which sided with team "and/or,"  resting heavily on the usage of "in part" in the first line.

In September 2018, the events giving rise to this case occurred. The Yakima Nation brought this particular claim seeking a preliminary injunction for team "and."  Unfortunately for them, the Ninth Circuit didn't agree.  

There is some delightful language in the Ninth Circuit opinion. Judge Ryan Nelson, writing for the majority, explained that while the "most common meaning" of and is "together" or a conjunctive usage, it isn't always used that way.  It can, he says, mean "or": 

Examples of “and” used to mean “or” abound. For example, a child who says she enjoys playing with “cats and dogs” typically means that she enjoys playing with “cats or dogs”—not that cats and dogs must both be present for her  to find any enjoyment. Similarly, a statement that “the Ninth Circuit hears criminal and civil appeals,” does not suggest that an appeal must have a criminal and civil component for it to be properly before us. Nor would a guest who tells a host that he prefers “beer and wine” expect to receive “a glass of beer mixed with wine.” OfficeMax, Inc. v. United States, 428 F.3d 583, 600 (6th Cir. 2005) (Rogers, J., dissenting). In each instance, the common understanding is that “and,” as used in the sentence, should be construed as the disjunctive “or.”

Seems pretty logical to me, but I would naturally use "or" in that last example (although I dislike beer so I wouldn't even say that last example).  Judge Nelson goes on to explain,

The same is true here when we examine “the broader context” of the Proclamation, Robinson, 519 U.S. at 341, in particular the Proclamation’s use of the term “in part” in Paragraphs 2 and 3. In both Paragraphs 2 and 3, the State “retrocede[s]” criminal jurisdiction “in part,” but retains “criminal jurisdiction” over “offenses involving non-Indian defendants and non-Indian victims.” If “and” in those  sentences is interpreted to mean “or,” the retrocession “in part” makes sense. Under that interpretation, the State has given back a portion of its Public Law 280 jurisdiction— jurisdiction over crimes involving only Indians—but has kept Public Law 280 criminal jurisdiction if a non-Indian is involved.

Interpreting “and” in those Paragraphs as conjunctive, however, does not give “in part” meaning. Under that interpretation, the State has retroceded all jurisdiction that it received under Public Law 280—that is, criminal jurisdiction over all cases involving Indians. If that is the case, Paragraphs 2 and 3 are no different than Paragraph 1, which retroceded “full civil and criminal jurisdiction” over certain subject matters. But that cannot be right, because Paragraph 1 uses the phrase “full,” whereas Paragraphs 2 and 3 use the phrase “in part.”

Looking at the Proclamation, this does seem like a logical reading of it, although I wonder why "and/or" wasn't used in the original drafting of the Proclamation.  It seems like that would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Regardless, let this be a lesson for drafters of statutes and Proclamations.  Have a happy Monday AND (and I do mean AND) a good week.

Reflections on the Originalism Debate

Admittedly, I was at a loss today about what topic to write about on this blog. But then I thought about the debate that I had with Robert Peck and Phillip Seaver-Hall regarding originalism. That debate was an example of how to engage in civil and respectful discourse.

1.    We did not attack each other; we attacked each other’s ideas.

Not once did Robert, Phillip, or I attack each other. Rather, we challenged each other’s ideas and arguments, including regarding the cases upon which we relied to support different interpretive methods. Indeed, to promote a diverse and reasoned public discourse, you must separate the person from the argument, and the individual from the ideas. Otherwise, you cannot have a constructive debate and the marketplace of ideas becomes a fading memory rather than an enduring value.

2.    You can disagree and still be professional and respectful.

At all times, the language that Robert, Phillip, and I used in presenting our arguments was respectful and professional. We did not use over-the-top language or strong adjectives to denigrate or demean each other’s position or person. Simply put, you can disagree with someone and still be friends. You can disagree and still value each other as professionals and people.

If anyone doubts that, talk to a couple that has been married for fifty years. Or remember that Justices Scalia and Ginsburg had a close and enduring friendship for years. And for good reason. Human beings are much more than their views on, among other things, constitutional interpretation, their vote for a presidential candidate, or their views on abortion. As Justice Scalia said when discussing his close friendship with Justice Ginsburg, “some very good people can have some very bad ideas.”[1]

3.    We showed humility.

The debate was respectful and polite. And it was not about trying to force our views upon the readers, but about making an argument and letting the readers form their own conclusions. Robert said it perfectly: “Readers now can reach their own conclusions, perhaps prompted to a perspective based on what we have said.” I suspect that some readers will agree with Robert and Phillip, and some will agree with me. That is a good thing.

Humility means, among other things, that you do not always believe that you are right. It means that you do not dismiss alternative perspectives. Rather, you listen to and learn from your opponents’ perspectives – and have the courage to admit when you are wrong. When people insist that they are right, something is usually very, very wrong.

Put differently, being an originalist does not make you a bad person; it does not mean that you support discrimination or inequality or are striving to advance a conservative agenda. Likewise, being a living constitutionalist (or embracing any alternative theory) does not make you a bad person either; it does not mean that you are relying solely on subjective values to advance a liberal agenda. Human beings are far more complex. Their ideas are far more nuanced. They come from different environments and thus have different worldviews. Respecting, rather than vilifying, those views is essential to a properly functioning democracy.

In academia today, this is often glaringly absent, and it is a shame. If diversity and inclusion mean anything, they mean welcoming and respecting different perspectives and allowing students to form their own conclusions rather than indoctrinating them into a particular worldview.

Ultimately, when asked how he dealt with colleagues with different ideas on constitutional interpretation, Justice Scalia replied, “if you can’t separate the two [the ideas from the person], you [have to] get another day job.”[2]

The same is true for law students, lawyers, professors, and, for that matter, everyone.

 

[1] 60 Minutes, Interview with Justice Scalia, available at: Justice Scalia On Life Part 1 - YouTube

[2] Id.

Courts are Regulating Generative AI for Court Filings. What Does This Mean for Legal Writers?

Thursday’s Rhaw Bar: A Little Bite of All Things Rhetoric and Law—exploring ideas, theories, strategies, techniques, and critiques at the intersection of rhetoric and legal communication.

Courts are Regulating Generative AI for Court Filings.  What Does This Mean for Legal Writers? 

There’s been a flurry of court-initiated activity around using generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) to draft court filings. One court has sanctioned the misuse of OpenAI’s large language model, ChatGPT.  Perhaps as a result, at least four more have issued orders regulating the use of generative AI in legal writing.

What’s going on here?  And what does this activity mean for legal writers?

How It All Began:  A Federal Court Sanctions Lawyers’ “Bad Faith” Use of ChatGPT “Fake Cases” in a Court Filing

In March of this year, two lawyers filed a motion in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that included citations to multiple court opinions that did not exist.  In Mata v. Avianca, Inc., the plaintiff’s lawyers admitted that one of the lawyers had used ChatGPT, “which fabricated the cited cases.”  The lawyer said that he did not think at the time that ChatGPT could fabricate cases.  According to the court’s finding of fact, the lawyers persisted in representing the cases as real even after they became aware that they were fake.

In its order sanctioning the attorneys, the court noted that although “there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” lawyers must “ensure the accuracy of their filings.”   As such, the Court sanctioned the lawyers for citing the fake cases under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b)(2), which required lawyers to certify that, after a reasonable inquiry, the lawyers believed that the “legal contentions [in the court filing were] warranted by existing law.”   The court suggested that, perhaps, if the lawyers had “come clean” about the fake cases in a timely manner, the lawyers might not have violated Rule 11 simply by mistakenly citing the fake cases.  But because the lawyers had engaged in acts of “conscious avoidance and false and misleading statements to the Court” and had continued to stand by the fake cases even after judicial questioning, they had engaged in bad faith, which merited sanctions. 

How Courts are Regulating Generative AI—And What They Appear to Be Concerned About

Between the time news reports began circulating and the Mata court’s order issuing sanctions, other courts acted to prospectively regulate generative AI use in cases before them.  Their rationales for regulating generative AI use in court filings vary but are focused on four concerns:

• ensuring the involvement of human beings in checking generative AI’s accuracy;
• ensuring that cited legal authority cited exists and is accurately described;
• protecting sensitive information from inadvertent disclosure to others; and
• ensuring lawyers do their own writing.

Human Beings Must Check Generative AI’s Output for Accuracy

In the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, one judge created a new “Judge Specific Requirement” that requires all attorneys and pro se litigants to certify for all filings in the case that either (1) they will not use generative AI to draft court filings or (2) a “human being” will check any portions generated by AI “for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases.”

The judge explained that “legal briefing” is not a good use of generative AI because it is “prone to hallucinations [(i.e., inaccurate information)] and bias.” Concerning bias, the judge said that because large language models like ChatGPT have not sworn an oath to “faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients,” they are “unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice” that applies to lawyers and act only according to “computer code” and “programming.” 

The judge advised parties that they could, if they desired, move for leave to explain why generative AI “has the requisite accuracy and reliability for legal briefing.”  The judge provided a certification form that requires a guarantee that

[n]o portion of any filing in this case will be drafted by generative artificial intelligence or that any language drafted by generative AI --including quotations, citations, paraphrased assertions, and legal analysis -- will be checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being before it is submitted to the court. I understand that any attorney who signs any filing in this case we'll be held responsible for the contents thereof according to the applicable rules of attorney discipline, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing.

A magistrate judge In the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois articulated a similar rationale when he added a certification requirement to his Standing Order for Civil Cases.   The judge required that any party that uses any “generative AI tool” for “preparing or drafting” court filings must “disclose in the filing that AI was used and the specific AI tool that was used to conduct legal research and/or to draft the document.”  The judge said that parties should “not assume” that relying on generative AI would “constitute reasonable inquiry” under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  The Standing Order focused on the unreliability and inaccuracy of legal research as the reason for the certification requirement. It said that the judge would “presume” that the certification means that “human beings . . . have read and analyzed all cited authority to ensure that such authority actually exist.”

Court Filings Must Have Accurate Citations to Law and the Record

Another judge focused specifically on the accuracy of citations to the law in his order requiring that the use of “artificial intelligence” for court filings be disclosed.  In a standing order for a judge sitting in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the judge required that all attorneys and pro se parties make a “clear and plain factual statement” that disclosed the use of “AI . . . in any way in the preparation” of court filings and certify “every citation to the law or the record . . . has been verified as accurate.”

Parties Must Protect Confidential and Business Proprietary Information from Disclosure to Generative AI

In the United States Court of International Trade, one judge issued an “order on artificial intelligence” to protect “confidential or business proprietary information” in court briefs.

In the Court of International Trade, specific rules protect “sensitive non-public information owned by any party before it” from disclosure.  As such, the court requires filings to identify which information contains sensitive information.  It also requires lawyers to file “non-confidential” versions of briefs that remove this information.  Lawyers practicing before the Court of International Trade can receive sensitive information if they are certified by the court to do so.

In this context, the judge explained his concern that “generative artificial intelligence programs . . . create novel risks to the security of confidential information.”  Because lawyers might prompt these programs with confidential or business proprietary information to get generative AI to provide useful outputs, a risk arises that generative AI will “learn” from that prompt, thereby enabling the “corporate owner of the [generative AI] program [to retain] access to the confidential information.”  The order says this implicates “the Court’s ability to protect confidential and business proprietary information from access by unauthorized parties.”

Accordingly, the court ordered all submissions drafted with the assistance of generative AI by using “natural language prompts” be accompanied by (1) a disclosure identifying which generative AI “program” was used and which portions of the document had been drafted with generative AI assistance, and (2) a certification stating that the use did not result in any sensitive information being disclosed to “any unauthorized party.”  The order also specifically allowed any party to seek relief based on the information in this notice.

Lawyers Must Do “Their Own Writing”

In the case of Belenzon v. Paws Up Ranch, LLC, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Montana, a judge ordered that an out-of-state attorney admitted pro hac vice must “do her own work.”  The court said that this included doing “his or her own writing.” As such, the court prohibited the pro hac lawyer from using “artificial intelligence automated drafting programs, such as Chat GPT.”  The court did not explain its reasoning in the order.

What Should Legal Writers Do in This New Regulatory Environment?

These varying approaches to generative AI (as well as the availability of it) put pressure on legal writers to anticipate what they should do in this new environment.  Here are some suggestions for taking action.

Check local court rules, standing orders, procedural orders issued in your case, or the published preferences of judges to see if a judge has rules on generative AI use. This is a quickly developing area, and you can expect that more judges—and perhaps even entire courts in their local rules—will begin to consider whether and how they regulate generative AI.

Read the new regulations carefully. How judges will regulate AI in their courtroom will likely vary, so read carefully and avoid assumptions.  For example, in the new regulations, the courts vary how they refer to the technology they are concerned about, using both “generative AI” and “artificial intelligence” as identifiers. But these terms do not necessarily mean the same thing. “Artificial intelligence” generally means a broader category of tools than “generative AI.”  For example, Word’s Editor is powered by artificial intelligence.  Lexis already uses “extractive artificial intelligence” in some of its research products. Brief Catch represents that it uses artificial intelligence in its products. These are all AI tools that do not fall within the category of generative AI. 

A lawyer attempting to comply with AI regulation needs to know the scope of what the court wants to regulate.  That is, does a court requiring a certification about “artificial intelligence” mean to include tools like those mentioned above?  If you are not sure what the judge means, it might be wise to ask.  (and judges should be as clear as possible about what artificial intelligence tools they are concerned about so as not to unintentionally regulate writing tools too broadly.  For example, Word’s Editor does not seem to raise the concerns the judges have identified yet fits within the category of “artificial intelligence.”)

In addition, courts vary in what they want you to do about generative AI. One court—in one specific circumstance—has prohibited its use.  But the rest—so far—ask for various attestations about what and how it has been used.  As time progresses, you may appear before courts regulating generative AI differently.  Get clear on the requirements and add the requirements to your court-specific writing checklist.

If you use generative AI to help you write, treat it like any other writing tool. Generative AI does not replace you; you are responsible for the quality of your writing.  The courts are right: no currently available generative AI tool replaces a lawyer in producing written documents.   But there is potential for generative AI to help legal writers write more clearly, precisely, correctly, and persuasively.  This could mean better and more cost-effective results for clients—and more efficient and effective practice before the courts.  In other words, courts could benefit from lawyers competently and carefully using generative AI as a legal writing tool.

Plus, enterprise versions of generative AI tools are rapidly developing for use in the legal domain, which may make using generative AI for legal writing less risky.   Some products already exist; others are on the way. These tools are meant for lawyers, and some lawyers are already using them.  Unlike the publicly available all-purpose large language models like ChatGPT and Bard, these fine-tuned and further trained models will likely better protect confidential client information; produce more accurate, reliable, and verifiable for legal research; and be more competent at generating effective legal writing.  In other words, future generative AI writing tools will do more to address the courts' concerns about generative AI.  Regardless of whether you are using general purpose or enterprise generative AI for your legal writing, one thing won’t change: you are ultimately responsible for the written work you produce.  You are the human being the courts care about. You cannot outsource your judgment and competence to generative AI.  It does not evaluate information, legally reason, or do legal analysis (even though it might appear to). It does not have a professional identity committed to the rule of law, just results, and fair play.  What it does is this:  It uses mathematical computations to predict the most appropriate words to provide in response to a prompt. Thus, to use generative AI ethically and responsibly, you must

Understand how generative AI works. Generally speaking, you have an ethical duty to be competent in using technological tools as part of your practice.  If you don’t have a basic understanding of natural language processing, machine learning, and large language models, you should get that understanding before you use generative AI.  There’s a strong argument that generative AI is here to stay as part of legal practice.  Learn all you can.

Be careful about disclosing confidential information in prompting generative AI; know how your prompts are used and retained. How generative AI treats the information you give it is in flux.  For example, while ChatGPT did not have a setting that kept prompts from training the large language model when it was released to the public, it does now.  And it also now has a setting that will allow users to limit the storage of prompts to 30 days.  While these changes are great examples of the rapid evolution of generative AI in response to user feedback, those changes don’t solve all of the lawyer’s problems concerning sharing confidential client information with generative AI. 

In my opinion, the question of what information can be shared with generative AI is a complex question to which only simple answers have been offered so far.  Part of the complexity comes from variations in state ethics rules.  Depending on your state ethics rules, you may have more or less leeway to ethically include client information in prompts.  In addition, if disclosing client information in a prompt furthers the client’s interests, perhaps there is room for a lawyer to argue that a disclosure to generative AI is warranted.  Moreover, it might be arguable that prompts for generative AI may, if carefully crafted, fall into the “hypothetical” rule that appears in many states’ confidentiality rules.  But, at this point, little certainty exists about how state bars will apply confidentiality rules when client information is shared in a generative AI prompt.   I hope that bar regulators provide answers to these questions about confidentiality—perhaps in ethics opinions. 

Know your legal obligations regarding data privacy and cybersecurity. The ethics rules about confidentiality don’t fully address the Court of International Trade Judge’s concern about disclosing proprietary information.  That information might be subject to other disclosure laws.  Thus, you should also consider whether you have legal duties that extend to the protection and privacy of your clients’ and others’ information in the generative AI context.  In addition, if you work for a law firm, you may have policies that address sharing and using information in the firm’s possession.  You should know what those policies are. 

And finally, check every AI-generated citation, fact, statement of law, and analytical statement. This is the dominant theme of the courts’ orders thus far: lawyers are failing to check the accuracy of generative AI’s output.  But if you are a lawyer, you already know that ensuring the accuracy of the work you produce is a fundamental ethical obligation.  So, no matter how confident you are in the output of a generative AI tool, you must always check the output that is purported to be factual or authoritative.  ChatGPT, for example, warns you about this.  At the bottom of its context window webpage, it states, “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.”   So, as you have always done with your legal writing, check the accuracy of every citation.  Read every legal authority to ensure it stands for the legal propositions you claim. Update and validate your authorities.  Double-check every fact.  Ensure that every step in the argument is logical, reasonable, ethical, and persuasive.  If you use generative AI to revise or edit your work, check every change to ensure it is correct.

What are your thoughts about generative AI and legal writing?

Kirsten Davis teaches at Stetson University College of Law and in the Tampa Bay region of Florida. She is the founding director of the Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication and currently serves as Stetson’s Faculty Director of Online Legal Education Strategies.  Among other things she’s up to right now, she’s currently studying generative AI and its impact on legal communication. The views she expresses here are solely her own and not intended to be legal advice. You can reach Dr. Davis at [email protected].

Blast from the past--Cleaned up citations

I am teaching our first year writing class in the fall (for the first time ever!). So, when I am not wrangling kids or working on the Journal, I am organizing class materials.  

While I was reading our text, I found a discussion of "cleaned up" citations. That discussion reminded me of this classic post from a few years ago, which I have now assigned as recommended reading to my students: (Clean[] Up) Your House, Your Car, Your Life--Not Your Citations.

A Sur-Reply on Originalism

A Sur-Reply on Originalism

1. The debate on these pages teaches lessons about arguing appeals.

Most readers of this blog probably look for the practice tips and insights that are often discussed on this blog. Occasionally, though, contributors address more substantive content. Beyond the doctrinal discussions that the contributors believe inherently interesting, these debates provide practical lessons. The different approaches to argument and counterpoint also enable readers to assess the effectiveness of these different tactics.

Recently, three of us weighed in on the use of originalism as an interpretive methodology. We used support for our views from putative allies of the other side (e.g., Adam citing Justice Kagan and me citing James Madison and Justice Scalia), disputed whether examples used supported the claims made for them, employed rhetorical devices, suggested procedural flaws, and honed in on weaknesses in our opponents’ theory.

In his reply to the arguments that Phillip Seaver-Hall and I made, Professor Adam Lamparello, who started the debate, wrote a reply. I found his defense of his position too juicy to ignore.

2. A familiar debate tactic does not necessarily win the day when it assumes too much.

Adam starts with a truism – that it is easy to criticize and much harder to propose solutions, which is a standard debate tactic. He suggests that his critics have failed to propose an alternative to originalism and that undermines their stance. However, he assumes that the goal he seeks is either universally desired or achievable. While it is true that we generally agree that judges should not invent constitutional holdings as though a court were a rolling constitutional convention and instead show fidelity to text and principles, both Phillip and I argued that originalism does not produce the interpretative nirvana Adam seeks and is as prone to imprinting personal views on the Constitution as any other approach. I showed that the decisions he cited to show results different than a judge’s ideological predisposition did not qualify as originalist so that they did not support his point.

Moreover, I expressed my doubts that any methodology could cabin human preferences or biases and were instead subject to selective reliance on those historical artifacts that hit a responsive chord with our personal views. Even so, as the best we could do, I suggested that common-law methodologies were both constitutionally proper and useful, citing a 1992 book I wrote for West Publishing on the topic.

That methodology permits us to consider the text, the framers’ intent, the ratifiers’ understandings, our collective experience, and precedents to understand the wisdom of all who came before us, seeking to apply constitutional principles, and be a part of that cross-generational conversation of what free speech or due process means, anchored in the written words and underlying purposes of a constitution, as Chief Justice John Marshall said, “intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.”[1] That sentiment was cited and endorsed by the originalist decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen,[2] with the additional explanation that the Constitution’s fixed meaning still must be “appl[ied] to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated.”[3]

Nor is a common-law methodology necessarily unbounded. Properly utilized, it employs generations of wisdom in applying law to controversies “to form a stable body of rules that not only determine immediate controversies but also guide future conduct,” as the late New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye explained.[4] She added, that to the extent it changes, it “grows incrementally, in restrained and principled fashion, to fit into a changing society.”[5]

That growth in sensible application, such as finding that schoolchildren do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate when public schools or the rights of children may never have been in the contemplation of those responsible for the First Amendment or even Fourteenth Amendment due process but still accords with our understanding of those rights throughout the ages. For me, this process seeks to remain faithful to the words and the document’s legitimacy as the written product of a democratic process, yet seeks to maintain its continued vitality by applying its commands and principles today to modern controversies not by whether those applications occurred at the time of ratification but with an understanding that that constitutional principles “have an iceberg quality, containing beneath their surface simplicity submerged complexities”[6] that may only be apparent when tested under a specific fact pattern.

3. Examples used must support the claim made.

Because he believes his debate opponents did not propose an alternative, Adam uses a straw man of “living constitutionalism,” to argue against it. Living constitutionalism is a loaded term, associated with the idea that the Constitution evolves to fit modern times and leaving judges with unbridled authority as though judges were solons employing their personal wisdom. He then works to knock down the legitimacy of “living constitutionalism.”

Treating Adam’s post as an argument against constitutional evolution through judicial decision, he uses a frequent tactic in arguments by showing how it produces bad results. Specifically, he attributes the decisions, unthinkable today, of Dred Scott v. Sandford,[7] and Korematsu v. United States,[8] to its use. He argues that both cases were policy decisions by a court not invested with policy authority, rather than interpretations of the Constitution as originally understood. I found that formulation curious because a reading of the two cases suggests that they were either originalist or textualist in nature.

In Dred Scott, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote “[i]t is not the province of the court to decide the justice or injustice, of the laws” but to interpret the Constitution “according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.”[9] That sentence certainly sounds like the originalism Adam favors. Consistent with what the current Supreme Court has done to explore originalism, Taney concluded that black people “were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States,” because they were not considered citizens when the Constitution was adopted.[10] That sentence, fueling the decision, also sounds quite originalist. To overcome that position, we required a civil war and the adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

His second example, Korematsu, might be deemed a textualist decision, rather than one based on “living constitutionalism.” The Court upheld the detestable internment of Japanese-Americans in that case, employing the same rationale it expressed a year earlier in upholding a wartime curfew applied to Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in Hirabayashi v. United States,[11] the Supreme Court reasoned that the

The Fifth Amendment contains no equal protection clause and it restrains only such discriminatory legislation by Congress as amounts to a denial of due process. … Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. For that reason, legislative classification or discrimination based on race alone has often been held to be a denial of equal protection.[12]

The absence of an equal-protection declaration in the Fifth Amendment allowed the Court to treat the constitutional war powers as the proper focus of its analysis. That authority, which it thought would support a plenary curfew despite its burden on rights, would also supports a targeted curfew:

The adoption by Government, in the crisis of war and of threatened invasion, of measures for the public safety, based upon the recognition of facts and circumstances which indicate that a group of one national extraction may menace that safety more than others, is not wholly beyond the limits of the Constitution and is not to be condemned merely because in other and in most circumstances racial distinctions are irrelevant.[13]

Subsequently, in Korematsu, the Court echoed that explanation, stating that even though racial discrimination warrants “rigid scrutiny,” “[p]ressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; [even if,] racial antagonism never can.”[14] Once again, war necessity rather than racial discrimination, the Court believed, undergirded the abhorrent treatment of Japanese-Americans.

I’m hard-pressed to understand how originalism might have prevented this result. Originalism would not have read equal protection into the Fifth Amendment, nor would it have necessarily found applicable limits to Congress’s war powers. Certainly, when the Court soon afterwards read an equal protection strand into the Fifth Amendment, it did not engage in originalism to get there. It instead lodged it in the “American ideal of fairness” and precedent that established that equal protection for schoolchildren in the District of Columbia had to be protected just as the Court said for students in the States in the Fourteenth Amendment, was merely a “more explicit safeguard of prohibited unfairness than ‘due process of law,’” and, equally “unjustifiable” as a matter of due process.[15]

5. Conclusion

Adam initiated a fun debate, and I’m grateful to him for doing so and for the way in which it was conducted. We disagree, and we have our perspectives on what counts or doesn’t count. Readers now can reach their own conclusions, perhaps prompted to a perspective based on what we have said. And they can also judge for themselves how effective our different argument strategies were in the ways that we deployed them.

 

[1] McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 415 (1819) (emphasis in orig.).

[2] 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022).

[3] Id. at 2132.

[4] Judith S. Kaye, State Courts at the Dawn of A New Century: Common Law Courts Reading Statutes and Constitutions, 70 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1, 5 (1995).

[5] Id.

[6] Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 94 (1968).

[7] 60 U.S. 393 (1857), superseded by U.S. Const. amend. XIV (1868).

[8] 323 U.S. 214 (1944), abrogated by Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392 (2018).

[9] Dred Scott, 60 U.S. at 405.

[10] Id. at 407.

[11] 320 U.S. 81 (1943).

[12] Id. at 100 (citations omitted).

[13] Id. at 101.

[14] Korematsu, 323 U.S. at 216.

[15] Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 499 (1954).