Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. praised the digital change in federal courts in his year-end report in 2023. He claimed that paper was becoming mostly optional due to electronic filing.
Not at the Supreme Court, though. Its rules mandate electronic submissions and require litigants who are not impoverished or incarcerated to file 40 paper copies of various documents, such as petitions for review, briefs opposing them, briefs from the parties in cases the court agrees to hear, and the deluge of friend-of-the-court briefs that accompany them.
And those are only the first of the court’s complex criteria. The paper filings must be presented as elegant tiny typeset booklets printed on opaque, unglazed paper weighing at least sixty pounds.
The guidelines outline acceptable fonts and margins as well as how the booklets must be securely bound in two or more locations along the left margin (perfect binding or saddle stitch are suggested).
Despite the subject topic, the booklets are enjoyable to read. They are also wasteful, costly, and redundant.
The court’s restrictions cost litigants and the environment a lot of money that isn’t necessary.A research written by William J. Aceves, a professor of law at California Western School of Law, was published in The University of Colorado Law Review last month. Regarding whether the justices should hear a matter at all, he urged the court to eliminate paper submissions, especially for the initial round of briefs.
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