The Supreme Court Litigation Clinic exposes students to the joys and frustrations of litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States. The bulk of the clinic is run as a small law firm working on live cases before the Court. Students participate in drafting petitions for certiorari and oppositions, merits briefs, and amicus briefs, compiling joint appendices, and preparing advocates for oral argument, as well as commenting (the technical term is kibbitzing") on drafts of briefs being filed by lawyers in other cases. The precise nature of the cases depends on the Court's docket, but during October Term 2002, the instructors participated, either as counsel for one of the parties or as counsel for an amicus, in cases involving voting rights, habeas corpus, race-conscious affirmative action, the federal firearms disabilities statute, sodomy, the Federal Arbitration Act, and the First Amendment. Our aim is to involve students as fully as possible in this type of litigation.
The class begins by meeting intensively during the first week of the semester to give students the necessary background in the peculiarities of Supreme Court practice, including the key differences between merits arguments and the certiorari process, the distinctive role of amicus briefs, and the Supreme Court Rules. After that, class meetings are devoted primarily to collaborative work on the cases the clinic is handling.
While students are primarily responsible for working on one of the cases being handled, they are also expected to acquire familiarity with the issues raised in other students' cases and both edit each others' substantive work and assist each other and the instructors with the technical production work attendant on filing briefs with the Supreme Court. The course involves substantial amounts of legal research.
The Supreme Court operates on a tight, and unyielding deadline, and students must be prepared both to complete their own work in a timely fashion and to assist one another and the instructors on other cases. The instructors do not ask students to do any kind of "grunt work" that they themselves are not also handling, but grunt work there will be: proofreading, cite-checking, dealing with the joint appendix, and the like. Students should expect to spend an average of 15 hours a week on the course, but that work will surely be distributed unevenly across the semester.
Unlike most other Courts, the Supreme Court has no student practice rules. Thus, students are not able to argue cases before the Court. But they will participate in moot courts on their cases, as both advocates and Justices.
Ideally students will already have experience with persuasive doctrinal writing, through a course like Federal Litigation or through intensive supervision during their summer jobs or other clinics.