November/December Hearing List
on Nov 26, 2005 at 7:24 am
Here is the Hearing List of attorneys arguing the dozen cases in the sitting that begins this coming Monday. Not surprisingly, the Solicitor General is arguing both the Ayotte abortion case (for the U.S. as amicus) and the Solomon Amendment case.
It’s not nearly as high-profile as those two, but anyone wishing to see a really top-rate argument is advised to note Whitman v. DOT, the first case to be argued on Monday, December 5th. It features 30-minute arguments from two of the very best oral advocates, Pam Karlan of Stanford Law School and Assistant to the SG Malcolm Stewart. (This is not, of course, meant to to slight in any way the many other superlative advocates arguing this session, e.g., Mahoney/Pincus/Sullivan/Chemerinsky, etc. It’s simply that Karlan and Stewart are not often mentioned in discussions of the SCOTUS bar “elite,” but they really ought to be.) It’s a federal employee rights case. (Disclosure: Goldstein & Howe, which operates this website, is on brief for petitioner.) The questions presented are:
1. Whether 5 U.S.C. 7121(a)’s provision that the negotiated grievance procedures of a federal collective bargaining agreement be “the exclusive administrative procedures” to resolve grievances precludes an employee from seeking direct judicial redress when he would otherwise have an independent basis for judicial review of his claims.
2. Whether the Civil Service Reform Act, 5 U.S.C. 7101 et seq., precludes federal courts from granting equitable relief for constitutional claims brought by federal employees against their employer.
