Today, the Harlan Institute and Ashbrook hosted the championship round for our virtual Supreme Court competition. Every year, we fly the top two teams and their coaches, to Washington, D.C. These high schoolers had a jam packed day. In the morning, we attended oral argument at the Supreme Court. For lunch, we chatted with a Supreme Court advocate about his just-argued case. And in the afternoon, the students presented arguments mooted before a panel of three federal judges at the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute. It was a memorable day for everyone. I'll write much more about the competition later. Here, I'd like to focus on the two argued cases. Preview: they are, at least on paper, extremely technical and, dare I say, boring. But the arguments were quite entertaining, and had their moments of levity.
The first argued case was Dupree v. Younger. At a high level, the case concerned whether an issue raised in a summary judgment motion was preserved for appeal. I won't even bother getting into the nuances of Rule 50 here. If you'd like a readable take on the case, go to Adam Unikowsky's post. (Yes, he writes on things other than mifepristone–you should follow his helpful Substack!)
For reasons that would become clear at the end, Justice Gorsuch was very engaged. He asked questions for most of the Petitioner's argument. At several junctures, Gorsuch seemed to fault the trial counsel for not clearly preserving an exhaustion issue. But Gorsuch immediately stressed that he was not directing fault at Andrew Tutt, who argued the case before the Court. Also, Gorsuch suggested at several points that the Court may have taken the wrong case, and there should be a DIG. (He likes to DIG). In the process, Gorsuch does this strange performance. He sort of leans forward, and drops his voice several registers, and speaks really slowly with a deadpan, as if he is a detached narrator. The transcript does not do justice to this dynamic:
