Source: https://mdappblog.com/category/argument-previews/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 22:07:02+00:00

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The Maryland high court is about to hear, on emergency briefing, the appeal in Lamone v. Lewin. The administrator of the State Board of Elections is challenging the April 26 injunction requiring that former state senator Nathaniel Oaks’ name be removed from the June primary ballot.
The Court granted certiorari on Friday. The parties filed opening briefs on Monday and reply briefs on Tuesday, with arguments Wednesday. The briefs are available here.
The Maryland judiciary website posted last Wednesday about the Syed case guidelines for the public and news media interested in attending oral arguments. As noted in the detailed order by new Chief Judge Patrick Woodward, oral arguments are being held in Courtroom 1 on the second floor of the Courts of Appeal Building in Annapolis (the larger of the two courtrooms regularly used by the Court of Special Appeals). Courthouse security is taking significant protections against recording devices, and limited seating is being provided to the public and media.
This post is not about the Syed case, specifically. But the circumstances of the Syed oral arguments expose a lack of proper public access to any of the intermediate appellate court’s oral arguments, in noted contrast with the Court of Appeals. Syed is quite obviously a highlighted, media-interest case, which poses an opportunity to discuss what procedures Maryland’s intermediate appellate court should consider, in at least the future, to accommodate public interest in specific, important oral arguments.
On February 5, 2015, the Court of Appeals of Maryland will hear argument in an insurance coverage action, Maryland Casualty Co. v. Blackstone International. If you’re not an insurance coverage practitioner, the questions presented are not likely to make much sense to you. Whichever way the Court of Appeals rules, however, the opinion is likely to draw national attention in insurance coverage circles.
In Montgomery County v. Fraternal Order of Police, No. 175 (Md. Ct. App. 2014), the Maryland appellate courts will confront for the first time the evolving doctrine of official speech. Official speech is any statement by a branch or entity of government or an individual acting in official capacity. It may be made in multiple forms, including oral, written, and electronic. Until more recent times, official speech has largely been an unquestioned prerogative of government. Governments need to communicate with their citizenry to exercise powers and effect programs, no less than individuals need to communicate with each other in order to achieve important or vital ends. The increase in partisanship at all levels of government, however, has turned an increasingly critical eye toward the lawful scope of official speech, with particular respect to its means of exercise and intended ends. The result has been judicial challenges regarding the reach of and external limits on official speech.
In June, I wrote here that law professors should use the Supreme Court’s reversal of a Fourth Circuit opinion (CTS Corp. v. Waldburger) as their case study to teach the complexity of statutory construction. But I fear that a subsequent pair of conflicting, high-profile opinions in the D.C. Circuit and Fourth Circuit construing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is what many law professors will be using to teach statutory construction. Halbig v. Burwell, No. 14-5018 (D.C. Cir. July 22, 2014), rehearing en banc granted (Sep. 4, 2014), and King v. Burwell, No. 14-1158 (4th Cir. July 22, 2014), are attractive as important cases that present a pure question of statutory construction, but using them to teach statutory construction runs the risk that students will see statutory construction as a mere euphemism for partisan “judicial activism.” The opinions are best used to instead explore the precarious role of appellate judges in resolving politically charged controversies.
Closer to home than Richmond, the Fourth Circuit is scheduled to hear oral arguments in three cases this week at the University of Maryland School of Law. As noted on the school’s website, the briefs have been made available online, and judge-permitting (and obviously not on any pending cases), there may be some Q & A with the gallery.

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