Court Opinion

ID: 9660760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:20:17.456736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:21.915840
License: Public Domain

BILLINGS, Judge,
concurring.
My initial vote was and continues to be one of concurrence in the principal opinion. However, I write to demonstrate there has *57been no “inconsistency” in the Court’s ami-cus curiae procedure as suggested in Judge Welliver’s separate opinion concurring in result.
First of all, I would limit amicus curiae procedure drastically because in the main most amicus briefs are repetitous of the briefs filed by the real parties in interest and too often are merely vehicles for propaganda efforts. Secondly, it appears that amicus curiae participation is ordinarily limited to the filing of briefs — before oral argument and submission of the case for decision. Black’s Law Dictionary (5th ed. 1979); see, e.g., U.S. Supreme Court Rule 36.
As he did in his criticism of the Court in the Chandra case concerning the amicus situation, Judge Welliver again fails to acknowledge that both in Chandra and this case, the amicus curiae briefs were in the case before the case was argued, submitted and decided — contrary to what happened in Fowler. The Fowler case had not only been briefed, argued and submitted for decision by the real parties in interest but the Court’s decision had been handed down before non-parties sought permission to file amicus briefs.
I submit there is a vast and obvious difference between amicus curiae briefs before decision, as here, as opposed to what happened in the Fowler case after decision.