The Volokh Conspiracy

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Crime

An instance of increased transparency at the Supreme Court

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I've recently published some articles that suggest that the Court ought to be more transparent in its non-merits orders work (here and here). So I think it's quite important to note a recent way in which the Court is doing just that. This month, the Court has started making the filings in Supreme Court disciplinary cases publicly available.

The change comes at a particularly opportune time, because this month is also when the Court has received a response from Howard Neil Shipley about why he should not be sanctioned for filing a largely incomprehensible cert. petition that was heavily written by a client. The response is available here, and it is written by Paul Clement and my former co-clerk Jeff Harris.

Howard Bashman has extensive analysis here, here, and here. I'm not sure what I ultimately think, though the response has convinced me that this is a much harder case than I initially thought.

But anyway, the real point of this post was just to note the Court's increased transparency on this issue, which is exactly the kind of change I've been hoping to see, and hope we'll continue to see more of.