We are organized and now ready to hear cases. We have granted certification in our first case. (See below.)
We encourage you to participate. This is a court peopled by working lawyers and those devoted to justice for individuals.
BCOTUS has granted certification on the following issue: “Whether the United States Supreme Court’s Decision in United States v. Comstock Correctly Interprets Article I, Section 8, the Necessary and Proper Clause?”
Please, remain seated. There is no reason to stand up when we enter the court. This is your court. We will leave affectations to others.
The pursuit of justice is the stuff of legend. Warriors battle for it. The oppressed pine away in hope. The powerful claim to dispense it. Justice and righteousness are twin handmaidens. At least we pretend that this is so.
Our courts decide cases according to law, and we hope that approximates a just result. Every practitioner, whether judge, prosecutor or defense counsel, knows the system fails. A good society tolerates some margin of failure. But what happens if that margin grows so wide as to yield a sense that the courts are failing? In that case, a sense that government is mere power, not authority, takes root. People claim that government lacks legitimacy.
We do not know whether the state of the law and society in the United States is at such a crossroads now. But we are distressed, each of us in different ways, by the emergence of a Supreme Court out of touch with the practical realities of the practice of law.
Each new nominee seems to take us further and further from a court with roots in the reality of human conflict, the stuff that drives litigation. Law professors, deans, federal judges, government lawyers, veterans of the big firms scramble to become justices, each differing in small ways that purport to reflect diversity. But the Supreme Court is not diverse. It is the apex of a pyramid nurtured and maintained by elites who govern without real and sustaining roots in the sorts of conflicts the courts are called upon to resolve.
Several us were bemoaning this sad state of affairs not long ago, when an idea took root: Why not create a court of our own? Staff it with justices committed to the practice of law at the level of human conflict. Let an immigration lawyer speak, a criminal defense lawyer, a former prosecutor, a civil rights lawyer. Let’s not staff the court with people who have made a name talking about the practice of law. Let’s create a court staffed with practitioners.
We have done so. Today we announce the court is open for business. There are nine of us, all with biographies posted elsewhere on this site. Like the court established in the wake of the founding, this court is in its infancy. It needs rules, procedures, practices. We will stumble as we grow, and we call upon you to submit cases and controversies. We also reserve, even relish, the right to decide whether the Supreme Court in Washington has reached the right results for the right reasons.
There are no filing fees here. But there are rules. Like the Court we shadow, we will adopt and amend and publish our own rules. Unlike the Court we shadow, we will have no police force or administrative apparatus to give our judgments binding force. We will rely on moral suasion and persuasive force to sculpt our sense of what is just and righteous. In our dreams, someone will listen. If no one heeds us, we will be no worse off than we are now, governed by a Court out of touch with the realities our clients’ experience.
This site is a work in progress. We welcome comments and critics. We nine will do our best to reflect best what we believe justice and the law should be. Whether the real Court takes note is questionable. While the elite shuffle deck chairs on the Titanic, we’ll be busy helping ordinary people to the rafts.
