B.L.U.F.
Three letter acronyms, the Bluebook, and Indigo Book. Abbreviations and more.

(1200 words, mostly cut and paste tables)

Lawyers are verbose yet hate making things easy to read. They will use Latin when English will do just as well. They will abbreviate words in non-standard ways, they will make use of lingo and terms of art at every chance. Often, it feels like they want to make their work as opaque as possible.

Like every code, there is a codebook which explains how to encode and decode their secret messages. The official codebook of the lawyer creed is The Bluebook® A Uniform System of Citation®. Every official abbreviation is in this “book”.

If you are interested in using the Blue Book reference, prices tart a $39/year for personal use.

The Indigo Book is An Open and Compatible Implementation of A Uniform System of Citation — The Indigo Book

They are not authorized by nor in any way affiliated with the Blue Book people.

I have been told that I am starting to use too many abbreviations and that is making my articles more difficult to understand.

So you get some parts of the Indigo Book.

T9. Required Abbreviations for Court Names

Table 9 describes what abbreviations are used when citing to a particular court. As an example, “D.” refers to a Federal District Court while “Dist. Ct.” refers to a State District Court.
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B.L.U.F.
This is the frames and receivers rule.
(650 words)

On October 5th, 2023, the DoJ applied on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket for the court to vacate the injunction issued by the N.D. Texas.

As we have discussed for the circuit courts, the Supreme Court has an “administrative panel”. Each circuit court has a Justice charged with overseeing that circuit. Overseeing is a massive overstatement.

When a case is appealed out of the circuit to the Supreme Court, it can come as a merits-based request for certiorari, or it can come as an emergency request. If it is an emergency request, it goes to the Justice that oversees that circuit. In this case, it is Justice Alito.

The state requested that the injunction issued in the N.D. Texas be vacated pending appeal. This is different language than I am used to seeing. Normally, the request is for a “stay pending appeal”. My understanding is that vacating a finding is to throw it out.

Justice Alito issued a temporary stay for 10 days to allow the parties to file briefs. You can expect the usual suspects to dog pile as well.

What Was Said

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Today is the day I start shipping the Velcro backers for those people who purchased them. I’m going to lead J.Kb. through the process so he can ship the patches. Thank you for your patience when I jumped the gun.

Miguel noticed my Tuesday Tunes was Sing, Sing, Sing and called me on not posting the best version:

The one version that everybody must hear — Miguel.

You can read about it: The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert

Numerous briefs have hit in the Rahimi case at the Supreme Court. The Court will be hearing oral arguments in November. I’ll start looking at these briefs this coming week. This should be easier as they are all in defense of The People and the Second Amendment.

J.Kb., did you give one of our “Dick Shooters” patches to Clint?

B.L.U.F.What do all of those citations mean, and why is it important?

(1900 words)

There are two types of items that can possibly be cited in a legal “brief”. Those are the opinion or ruling of the court, and things submitted to the docket of a case.

With “real” legal briefs and opinions, they never(?) cite to docketed material in other cases. They might cite to items on this case’s docket. These are sometimes difficult to figure out, but it is possible.

Most of the problems stem from abbreviations. As an example, when a case is appealed, the parties might be asked to submit a “joint appendix”. This is often a multi-volume submission of hundreds of pages with all referenced works listed. In the latest filing by the state in Duncan v. Bonta the state cites some 28 different documents.

This is similar to the bibliography that some of my posts include.

Once the Joint Appendix is filed, the parties refer to those citations by “JA #”, where “#” is the number of that entry in the joint appendix. This makes it somewhat easier for the people reading to recognize the citations they have already processed. All it takes is a checkmark next to that citation to tell the reader they have already read and analyzed that citation.

For us, common people, it means we have to find the joint appendix and access it to look up a citation. I’m almost to the point where I want to write software that takes a PDF of these references and turns it into a spreadsheet.

Names

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B.L.U.F.Short discussion of the level of honesty from the state.

I’m under the weather, so nothing too long, I hope. (I can hope, it just doesn’t happen.)

(2200 words)

Duncan v. Bonta is the case that started in 2017 challenging California’s magazine ban. Judge Benitez found magazine bans to be unconstitutional. He enjoined the state from enforcing the magazine ban. Thousands of magazines flowed into the state.

The state begged for a stay while the case was on appeal. Judge Benitez granted that stay in part. Those people who possessed forbidden magazines were protected as well as those that received magazines during the injunction, as well as the people who ordered during Freedom Week but had not yet received their magazines.

Since there was no emergency motion for a stay, the case was assigned to a three judge panel. The three judge panel agreed with Judge Benitez. The opinion of the three judge panel was written by Circuit Judge Lee.

The state asked for an en banc hearing. As expected, it was granted. The en banc panel then found in a 7 to 4 opinion that a magazine ban was constitutional and vacated the three judge panel’s opinion. Judge Vandyke wrote a fantastic dissent on the case, slamming the majority.

The plaintiffs (good guys) appealed to the Supreme Court. The request for certiorari was not granted, nor was it denied. The case was held pending the outcome of Bruen. After Bruen was decided, the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the en banc panel’s opinion, and remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit.
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