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Last week, the legal world erupted when Justice Thomas broke his seven year oath of silence on the Supreme Court. The only problem was no one knew what he said. The transcript and audio were not helpful.

Now, the transcript has been updated (of course you’ve noticed at the top of every page where it says “Official – Subject to Final Review.” Well it was reviewed, and here is “Well, there — see, he did  not provide good counsel.” Here is the full colloquy with Thomas’s updated marks.

JUSTICE SCALIA: She was a graduate of Yale law school, wasn’t she?

MS. SIGLER: She’s a very impressive attorney.

JUSTICE SCALIA: And another of his counsel, Mr. Singer — of the three that he had — he was a graduate of Harvard law school, wasn’t he?

MS. SIGLER: Yes, Your Honor.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Son of a gun.

JUSTICE THOMAS:  “Well, there — see, he did  not provide good counsel.”

MS. SIGLER: I would refute that, Justice Thomas.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Counsel, do you want to define constitutionally adequate counsel? Is it anybody who’s graduated from Harvard and Yale?

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Or even just passed the Bar?

MS. SIGLER: Or LSU law.

Still not very funny, but at least it helps.

H/T How Appealing.

The BLAG has membership consisting of the Republican and Democratic House Leadership:

The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group currently is comprised of the Honorable John A. Boehner, Speaker of the House, the Honorable Eric Cantor, Majority Leader, the Honorable Kevin McCarthy, Majority Whip, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader, and the Honorable Steny H. Hoyer, Democratic Whip. The Democratic Leader and the Democratic Whip have declined to support the position taken by the Group on the merits of DOMA Section 3’s constitutionality in this and other cases.

The five members are: the Speaker, Majority leader, and Majority Whip, and the Minority leader, and Minority Whip. The party in control gets three seats, the party in the minority gets two seats. It also seems (if Wikipedia is to believed) that the party in charge gets to control what the BLAG does. Here, the two in dissent, Pelosi and Hoyer, have vocally opposed BLAG spending $3 million on Paul Clement. Boehner doesn’t care (maybe he would roll his eyes like FLOTUS).

My question is what would’ve happened if the Democrats won the house in 2012, and cut off all funding for the BLAG, or directed the GC to not pursue the case.

What would have happened? Would the case have ended? Would the members of Congress who voted for the DOMA have standing to sue? Would the Court have to appoint amicus to argue? Would Paul Clement argue the case anyway because he’s Paul Clement? (Certainly there is a Clement-prudential-doctrine somewhere in the U.S. Reports).

Before the election I had blogged what would happen to the DOMA litigation if Romney won.

Anyone know how this would work?

Thanks to my colleague Dru Stevenson for working this this tricky question with me.

Chuck Cooper urges the Supreme Court to overturn an opinion written by John Marshall himself, Strawbridge v. Curtis, which imposed the “complete diversity” rule.

The 1806 ruling in Strawbridge v. Curtiss established what would become known as the “complete diversity” rule — meaning lawsuits may not be removed from state to federal court if any opposing parties are from the same state. As a result, plaintiffs’ attorneys have been able to evade federal court jurisdiction for the “home cooking” of state courts by the simple expedient of naming an in-state defendant along with the out-of-state targets of the lawsuit.

According to an opinion written by Marshall’s colleagues several years after his death, the chief justice “repeatedly expressed regret” that Strawbridge was wrongly decided. Although the Supreme Court has subsequently clarified that the Strawbridge rule is not required by the Constitution, the decision has never been overruled.

Strawbridge was wrong as a matter of first impression, but something tells me John Roberts won’t vote to overturn a Marshall case.

Federal diversity jurisdiction isn’t an archaic vestige of a bygone age. The original intent for the federal judiciary’s role is as sound today as it was more than two centuries ago. Evading federal jurisdiction to obtain crushing settlements and judgments in plaintiff-friendly state courts causes real harm to national and international businesses and results in lost global competitiveness for our nation and lost jobs for our citizens.

The U.S. Supreme Court has a chance in Standard Fire to begin the process of correcting Marshall’s “regrettable” 1806 mistake and restoring constitutional guarantees for out-of-state defendants.

Op-Eds about federal jurisdiction make me happy.

Check out information on the symposium and my panel here:

10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Panel 2: Big Data Applications in Scholarship and Policy I

• Josh Blackman, Assistant Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law
• Carole Roan Gresenz, Professor, Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies
• Bill LeFurgy, Digital Initiatives Manager, National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program, Library of Congress
• Kathy Zeiler, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
• Moderator: Kumar Percy Jayasuriya, Associate Law Librarian for Patron Services, Georgetown University Law Center

I will be talking about Assisted Decision Making and FantasySCOTUS. Hope to see you there!

The Verge features some bad-ass emails Steve Jobs sent to the heads of Palm and Google, telling them not to recruit Apple employees.

 

Of course, Google went on to compete with the iPhone, even though Google had originally agreed to work with Apple. Schmidt used to be on the Board of Apple. There’s a reason the iPhone used Google Maps for so long, and why it was such a big deal with Apple finally dropped Google Maps.

I had several Palms. I had a Palm IIIe back in high school. I cracked it when I sat on it. I also had a Palm Treo 600.

And it’s funny that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, thinks he can avoid creating a paper trail by sending an email.

He needs to learn from Solicitor General Kagan. Ask for a phone number!