Surprise by Cert

“We want to see some big stuff in arguments."

By and

The Supreme Court saves the day (or at least, this episode) with a slew of last-minute cert grants. A consolidated immigration case; a legal battle between a 93-year-old woman and the state of Minnesota over a foreclosed condo; a search for the line between free speech and death threats; and, for good measure, David lets out a bee that’s been buzzing in his bonnet since law school over a religious accommodations case. Plus: so long sans serif!

Show Notes:

Pugin v. Garland, Garland v. Cordero-Garcia

Tyler v. Hennepin

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  1. Mkliegman

    On Counterman v Colorado, seems to me (lawyer, not steeped in 1st Amendment law) First Amendment should be irrelevant, i.e., one on one communications to private person not a shield against a criminal statute. Hence the (only) issue is whether Counterman's actions violated the criminal statute, and your "subjective" vs "objective" test. I don't think objective test eliminates requirement for mens rea, provided the test is whether the defendant knew or should have known (i.e., reasonable person objective standard) that his actions would be regarded as threatening.

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    Alexander Ioannidis

    I am currently a 2L in law school and I was literally working on my Employment Discrimination outline covering Title VII. We will go more in depth on religious accommodations in our next class. This pod is awesome, but it is even more special to have it as a resource while in law school.

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    Skeep

    A good Op-Ed in the NYT by Eric Foner of the 14th Amendment. As the first section on equal protection and even the third section on insurrectionists get most of the attention on AO, perhaps digging into section 2 and disenfranchisement, and section 4 on the validity of the US public debt would make for a good topic?

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  4. Gern Blansten

    Let me add to the font comments as a professional comic book letterer (among other graphic design things). I was taught that those feet wind up making de facto horizontal lines in the text, which makes large blocks of it easier to read. It's why so many books are in serif fonts.

    Relevant to David's interests, comic books are lettered in sans serif BUT often in all capital letters because that creates those easier to read horizontal rows and does away with any descenders (the part that hangs down on a lower case "y" or "p") hitting any of the letters below it. Originally done by hand and now mostly fonts that mimic the hand-drawn look.

    David should also know that there is a Will Eisner Spirit character named "Sand Saref". It's a lousy comic book adaptation movie so I'm afraid he might like it.

    And last, because I obsess about fonts all day, I recommend for the geeky "Typeset In the Future" which chronicles Microgramma Bold Extended (the font on the Star Trek movie Enterprises) and its use in 2001, Star Trek, Wall-E and many more future/techie movies.

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  5. Nate.Oman

    A persistent theme on this podcast is how to pronounce the various Latin tags that show up in legal language. Buckle up for some ultra-amateur, law-prof Latin rules:

    1. There are no silent vowels in Latin. A final e is pronounced and has no effect on the pronunciation of other vowels. Thus, for example, "fide" has two syllables not one syllable.

    2. C is always hard like a k and never soft like an s. Thus, for example, prima facie is "prima fa-ki-ee" not "prima fa-shee." English, however, has blessed some mispronunciations by long usage such as "Caesar," which should be pronounced "Kaiser." Reasonable people can disagree here in the legal context, but be aware of the potential pain to Latin pedants.

    3. In Latin, the second to last syllable, called the penult, is always stressed, UNLESS the penult has a short vowel AND the word has three or more syllables, in which case the third to last syllable (the antepenult) is stressed. So this means that for most words, the stress will be on the penult, e.g. in perSOnum jurisdiction.

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      Dougherbert

      But as you know lawyers and judges gleefully mispronounce Latin phrases all the time. I took Latin in college because I thought it would help me in law school, which it did not ... at all.

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      1. Nate.Oman

        Yes. Law Latin is generally terrible but on many phrases there are a number of accepted pronunciations. One might as well choose the one that is actually correct.

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  6. Wegmanss

    Concerning the font change, there’s a problem with sans serif fonts: a capital I looks exactly like a lower case l. I’ve become a committed Tahoma font user because it solves that by putting top and bottom bars on a capital I but otherwise it’s sans serif. And why Calibri instead of the more common Arial?

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  8. Cj.Vierra

    Conceding that it is standard for individual courts to have their own rules, Local Rules are a bane of the practice of law. I have my own ideals about what fonts should be used, what pre-trial proceedings should entail, etc., but courts need to think more about litigants--especially barely-above-indigent ones--and less about their non-essential preferences. Lawyers CAN'T ignore the Local Rules, but they are forced to spend way too much time--and charge their clients way too much money--perusing them.

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  9. Brilliantly Oblivious

    Although it does not merit the death penalty, Sarah needs to be taken to task for mispronouncing the Elm City’s name. It is pronounced New Ha’ven with the accent on the first syllabic of the second word. Or if you were my mom (z”l), N’Haven (same accenting).
    Egads! Didn’t they teach you anything at the second rate school by the Charles River?
    I believe our fair city was named New Haven as it was to be a new haven for those Puritans who thought Hartford was not religiously rigorous enough.

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  10. Ethan Williams

    Regarding Counterman v Colorado, the case considers the situation where a reasonable person would recognize the comments as a threat, but the mens rea may be lacking. What about the opposite case: where an individual makes a seemingly innocuous comment but a prosecutor believes they can demonstrate that the individual intended that comment as a true threat? Seems like a dangerous door to open. I think David alluded to this briefly, but I’d love to hear more.

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