[Lnc-business] Request for Amicus Brief

[Joe Bishop-Henchman]

   Someone asked the LNC's lawyers to chime in, and as one I'll just
   reinforce what others have said.
   The Supreme Court agrees to hear fewer than 1% of the cases appealed to
   it, and one common feature of those cases it does hear is lots of
   amicus briefs. It's not causal but it is correlative, so if we think
   the issue is important (and we do) we want the Court to get lots of
   separate amicus briefs.
   If the Court agrees to hear the case, we then would have the choice
   (and expense) to file a separate merits brief.
   The printing costs is standard (the Supreme Court has some archaic
   demands on this, including non-standard paper sizes), and the estimate
   for lawyer costs is a steal. (I've had to pay anywhere between free and
   $90,000 for this, with an average of about $20,000.) That's my main
   question - Oliver, do we have a lawyer ready to write it? If so, I'd
   want us to do our own brief. If not, pairing with someone else's makes
   sense. The national party perspective and the state party perspective
   are both valuable for the Court to hear and need not be combined if we
   can avoid it.
   Agree with those who want to leave to Chair and or the Exec Committee
   to decide, due to the short time frame.
   Finally, Oliver just so you know, I'm a member of the Supreme Court Bar
   (and NY, MD, and DC). While I don't have the bandwidth to write briefs,
   I am able to be counsel of record on them should we ever need it.
   JBH