The Appellate Judges Education Institute is the signature event of the Appellate Judges Conference. It was held this year on November 14-17 in Boston. The institute — which the AJC produces in partnership with the National Judicial College and with the Council of Appellate Lawyers and Council of Appellate Staff Attorneys — is a summit of appellate judges, practitioners, and staff attorneys.
The 318 registrants represented 38 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Micronesia.
The summit featured a number of prominent speakers. Former Solicitor General Neal Katyal participated in a fireside chat with Judge Jacqueline Nguyen of the Ninth Circuit.
Professor Neil S. Siegel of the Duke Law School and Judge Michelle Childs of the District of Columbia discussed Professor Siegel’s new book The Collective-Action Constitution. Professor Siegel argues that the U.S. Constitution was primarily designed to empower the federal government to solve collective-action problems among states, rather than to limit federal power or protect individual liberties. While acknowledging the importance of other rationales, Siegel contends that this framework can explain a great deal, particularly in areas like interstate commerce, taxation, and federal jurisdiction.
Justice Goodwin Liu of the California Supreme Court and Justice Briana Zamora of the New Mexico Supreme Court discussed diversity, equity, and inclusion in the legal profession.
Sherrilyn Ifill, a professor of civil rights at Howard Law School and a former President & Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, participated in a panel on the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
And as he does every year, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law gave magisterial updates on the previous year’s civil and criminal decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The summit included plenty of advanced nuts-and-bolts programming about appellate practice and appellate judging. A panel of judges and practitioners discussed how appellate lawyers can contribute to the work of a trial team in building and protecting the trial record. Another panel – composed of two appellate judges, a practitioner, and a law professor – discussed preservation of error and sua sponte decision making. Another addressed electronic briefing.
An advanced-legal-writing panel discussed hidden ambiguities in legal writing. In particular, the panel focused on ambiguities that can be avoided by recognizing the difference between full and partial negation.
Another panel discussed how practitioners can encourage or discourage state involvement in their cases. That panel featured a sitting state attorney general, a former state solicitor general, and the director and chief counsel of the National Association of Attorneys General’s Center for Supreme Court Advocacy.
A practicing appellate attorney, an appellate court clerk, and a state Supreme Court Justice formed a panel that discussed appellate oral arguments. They addressed information one can and should obtain beforehand, various methods of argument preparation, questions that may be asked, and how to handle certain situations that can arise during argument.
Other panels, in addition to the one commemorating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, took a broader look at the legal system and the rule of law. They examined the legal system from a historical perspective and addressed ongoing challenges.
A panel marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, a young black man who was shot and killed by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer. Investigation of that shooting had brought to light widespread misuse of courts as a revenue source. The panel focused on the persistence of such misuse.
Other panels addressed how adversary nations can erode public trust in America’s legal system and discussed threats to an independent judiciary. And a panel, in reviewing the courage displayed by John Adams and Thurgood Marshall, reaffirmed the importance of that seminal virtue for all citizens, especially judges and practicing lawyers.
Next year marks the summit’s 25th year. The 2025 summit will be in Minneapolis on November 13-16. Preparations for the next Summit are underway. We hope that you will save the date and join us there.