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Amicus Briefs Inundate Supreme Court - Remember Sheldon Whitehouse's Presentation
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amicus-briefs-inundate-supreme-court-11615039201WASHINGTON—Does the Supreme Court have too many secret admirers?
Some critics say yes, thanks to a flood of friend-of-the-court briefs advocating specific outcomes in high-stakes cases, sometimes with multiple briefs in a single case tracing their funding to undisclosed common sources.
A Supreme Court rule requires that briefs filed by outside groups or individuals—known as amicus curiae, the Latin legal term for friends of the court—disclose if they were funded by a party to the case or its lawyer, or whether anyone other than an outside group’s member or attorney contributed money to their preparation.
That provision “is very easy to evade,” says Paul Collins, a political-science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has studied the influence of amicus briefs. “Wealthy individuals and corporations can donate money to an interest group, it puts that money in a general fund, and then uses the general fund to file an amicus brief,” Mr. Collins said. “And that donation doesn’t fall under the Supreme Court’s current disclosure rules.”
Amicus briefs long have factored in appellate decision making. Advocates in test cases ranging from Brown v. Board of Education, which in 1954 found school segregation unconstitutional, to District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case striking down a municipal ban on handguns, have helped coordinate amicus briefs to ensure that multiple arguments get before the court.
But the volume of amicus briefs today is breaking records. The court’s last full term, 2019-20, saw 911 amicus briefs filed, for an average of 16 per case, according to a study published in the National Law Journal last November. That is up from 715, or an average of nine a case, in 2010-11. The longer-term growth is even greater: Such briefs were filed in 96% of cases argued before the Supreme Court over the past decade but in just 23% of cases in the decade ended in 1955.
Some critics say yes, thanks to a flood of friend-of-the-court briefs advocating specific outcomes in high-stakes cases, sometimes with multiple briefs in a single case tracing their funding to undisclosed common sources.
A Supreme Court rule requires that briefs filed by outside groups or individuals—known as amicus curiae, the Latin legal term for friends of the court—disclose if they were funded by a party to the case or its lawyer, or whether anyone other than an outside group’s member or attorney contributed money to their preparation.
That provision “is very easy to evade,” says Paul Collins, a political-science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has studied the influence of amicus briefs. “Wealthy individuals and corporations can donate money to an interest group, it puts that money in a general fund, and then uses the general fund to file an amicus brief,” Mr. Collins said. “And that donation doesn’t fall under the Supreme Court’s current disclosure rules.”
Amicus briefs long have factored in appellate decision making. Advocates in test cases ranging from Brown v. Board of Education, which in 1954 found school segregation unconstitutional, to District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case striking down a municipal ban on handguns, have helped coordinate amicus briefs to ensure that multiple arguments get before the court.
But the volume of amicus briefs today is breaking records. The court’s last full term, 2019-20, saw 911 amicus briefs filed, for an average of 16 per case, according to a study published in the National Law Journal last November. That is up from 715, or an average of nine a case, in 2010-11. The longer-term growth is even greater: Such briefs were filed in 96% of cases argued before the Supreme Court over the past decade but in just 23% of cases in the decade ended in 1955.
REMEMBER Sheldon Whitehouse's fantastic explanation about how our US Supreme Court is bought and controlled, lock, stock and barrel by big, secret, dark money:
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