waiting on our opinion

As most of you probably already know, I had the chance to work on and help draft the brief for a case being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. It was quite a fun and intellectually-challenging experience. It was also quite an honor considering I'd had my license for about 6 months and this was the first pleading I'd ever put my name on. What was the case about? Well, if you're not a lawyer, it couldn't be more boring (and even if you are, it's admittedly a little dry and esoteric), but the issue was whether the Federal Courts could exercise subject matter jurisdiciton over a case in which the plaintiff filed in state court alleging a state law cause of action, but where the resolution of a significant question of federal law was outcome determinative of his claim (that is, if federal law waw interpreted to mean one thing, he'd win, but if it was interpreted to mean another, he'd lose). Believe it or not, this is a ridiculously more complicated question than it appears and recent (i.e. past 20 years) Supreme Court decisions had only helped muddy the waters. There's more info (and the pleading bearing my name) here. Anyway, we're still awaiting a decision, but in keeping with Supreme Court tradition (and the justices are nothing if not respectful of tradition), we should hear one of the remaining mondays in June (@ around 10:00am). While we wait, though, I thought I'd post some of the pictures from the trip. This first one was snapped as we came around the corner from the capitol and is the first time it really hit me that this was really going to be decided by these justices in this Court -- pretty sobering, really -- that's me in the black walking up the steps:



This next one is of the son of one of the attorneys who helped work up the file. He was really a riot, but I think this picture will give you a better sense of scale:



And this last one is of all of the attorneys who worked on the file and came along for the trip:



Clockwise from the top left, that's Tony Pearson, John Lichtenberg, Greg Timmer, myself, Mary Tabin, and Mike Walton. Anyway, so now we wait, I'll post again when we hear what happened. By the way, late last week, Mike Walton -- they guy who argued this case and standing in the front left of the above photo -- gave us laser-etched copies of the cover of the brief as a momento of the occasion. While I hope this is not my last Supreme Court adventure, in the likely event that it is, this sure is a nice keepsake: