The 17 tech firms jointly filed an amicus brief, a mechanism by which individuals or companies can offer their view on a case they feel affects them even if they're not explicitly involved.
When Justice O'Connor referenced specific amicus briefs in an official Court decision, it sends a clear message: if your side sends the right amicus brief, that could decide the case.
So law clerks on a deadline are pouring over amicus briefs. They're reading whatever outside research their Justices ask them to find, and their job doesn't even technically include fact-checking any of it.
In a way, amicus briefs are exactly what legal realists like Brandeis wanted. They're a means of getting information from the real world into the courtroom.
There was a massive effort in the Perkins Coie litigation to get, you know, the amicus brief from the big law firms and then the tiny law firms and then the law projects and the legal academics.
Absolutely, and I should give a lot of credit to Brent Skorup, who really has taken the lead on drafting our amicus briefs at the appellate level and coming up at the Supreme Court level.
And as Leah just said, because both the federal government and the petitioner are arguing that this kind of restitution is criminal, the court appointed an amicus, John Bash, to take the other position.
I was happy to hear that the amicus brief, that the person who was brought in to look at it, who's a very legitimate person, said, These charges should be dropped.