Electronic briefs probably will be required
on May 14, 2007 at 2:13 pm
UPDATE: 2:58 p.m. The proposed new rules are now available on the Supreme Court website, at this link.
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it is considering a change in its Rules to require lawyers to file electronic copies of briefs on the merits of granted cases. The electronic version, however, will not replace the requirement for merits briefs in booklet-form; it is in addition to the traditional form under present Rule 25. (UPDATE: The Court does not plan to post the newly required e-versions of merits briefs directly on its website; it will continue, however, to provide a link to merits briefs on an American Bar Association website, found here.)
The Court is also pondering some reduction in the time it will allow for filing some merits briefs. Under new provisions in Rule 25, the respondent’s brief on the merits would have to be filed in 30 days — five days sooner than before, and reply briefs would be due in 25 days — ten days sooner than before. The Court suggested these changes would recognize that “the time period between the granting of a petition for a writ of certiorari and the dae of oral argument has decreased in recent years.”
The Court invited public comment on these and other proposed Rules changes, with comments due by June 4, in writing. Any changes in the rules would be adopted on June 25, and would go into effect Aug. 1, under the proposal. The proposed changes will be posted on the Court’s website later Monday.
Among the other significant changes (amid a host of minor revisions), the new Rules would impose new requirements on attorneys filing amicus curiae briefs, at both the petition and merits stages. New Rule 37 would require a friend-of-court to notify counsel in the case of intent to file a brief at the petition stage, and to send an electronic version of every brief in a case granted and scheduled for oral argument. If an amicus is supporting a petitoner at the petition stage, before review is granted, its brief must be filed within 30 days after the underlying case is put on the docket, with no extensions allowed.
Among other changes, the Court is considering putting words limits on filed documents, instead of page limits. A comment by the Clerk accompanying the proposed revisions says that this change was made “to limit the length of documents while eliminating any incentive to increase the number of words on a page.” It adds that the change follows a similar change in the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The new Rule 33.1 also clarifies which words are to be included in the allowed count — footnotes, for example, count as part of the allotted length in words.
The Court also proposes to double its fee for admission to its Bar — from $100 to $200. The Clerk’s comment notes that the last fee increase was in 1979.
