Friend of the court
A Jersey legal firm has filed a friend of the court brief for the pending Kelo v. New London case:
An Atlantic City organization is getting involved in a Supreme Court case it says has ramifications for developments in South Jersey.
South Jersey Legal Services has filed an amici curiae – or friends of the court – brief in connection with a Connecticut eminent domain case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, the organization’s deputy director, Douglas Gershuny, said Wednesday.
[snip]
South Jersey Legal Services’ suits also accuse Camden and Mount Holly of civil rights violations, as the two neighborhoods declared blights are minority neighborhoods.
I do wonder how much credence the SCOTUS puts in friend of the court documents?
December 11th, 2004 at 5:17 am
They’ll never win a case, but they can often have impact in how an opinion ends up being drafted (and, therefore, what the future value of a precedent might be). Some justices have remarked that they read all AC briefs from certain groups (I’ve been told that Justice Ginsburg said she reads all AC’s from Pacific Legal Foundation, for instance, and I’m sure many others have preferances.)
However, there are something like 22 AC briefs on one side in Kelo, so I doubt they’ll all get read.