Friday, December 08, 2006

CAAF adopts rules changes

Today CAAF announced several amendments to its rules, effective 1 January 2007. See http://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/Rules2007Jan.pdf.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rule 37(c)(1): The Columbus Clipper wins again! Now appellate counsel just needs to squeeze all future pleadings into 10 pages. Though, speaking of squeezing, The Clipper is probably more worried about finding a nice quiet place to visit the Coral Sea in the near future.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but they also changed the rule on Grostefon.

Jason Grover said...

The change to Rule 26 greatly changes the effect of an amicus. No longer can an amicus for the defense wait to see what the government says in its answer and then file the amicus, in effect producing two reply briefs. Now the amicus has to put the cards on the table before the answer, giving the government the opportunity to craft its answer with the amicus in mind. That probably makes sense from the Court's view- it allows the opposing party to respond to an amicus. But it sure hurts the defense. Not only is the ability to have two reply briefs lost, but the chances of getting an amicus are lessened as the potential amicus have less time to consider, research, and make a decision about whether to file one. I predict that the already slim number of amicus briefs decline. Although I assume NIMJ will continue to file them, I suspect that the appellate defense divisions will be less likely to file on behalf of their sister services.