Melissa Hart

Oct 19, 2023 | statecourtreport.org | Justin Long |Alicia Bannon |Melissa Hart |Miriam Seifter

Recently, scholars, practitioners, and the public have turned attention to the U.S. Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the justices’ relatively new practice of using abbreviated procedures to resolve important issues. Numerous scholars have decried the lack of transparency and other faults in the process. But the Supreme Court is far from the only appellate court to use shortcuts.

Oct 12, 2023 | statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Melissa Hart |Miriam Seifter |Douglas Keith

In legal opinions, footnotes are often where the action is: a place for caveats, dueling barbs, and occasionally new legal principles. (There are U.S. Supreme Court cases than the main holding.) They can also be a place where judges drop breadcrumbs for future litigants. That’s what the New Mexico Supreme Court recently did in footnote seven ofGrisham v.