I'm Elizabeth Slattery and I'm Tiffany Bates and welcome to SCOTUS 101 where we break down what's

happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our

favorite branch of government. This week we're talking about recent oral arguments and some new grants,

a new study measuring the scolianus of appellate judges, and we'll interview the co-head of Goodwin

Proctor's appellate practice, Willie Jay. So what is happening at SCOTUS this week? Well,

there still haven't been any new opinions. And what are they doing? Yeah, not sure. But the court was

in session this week and heard four oral arguments. After this week, the justices won't be back

until late February for the next set of arguments. I wouldn't call any of. After this week, the justices won't be back until late February

for the next set of arguments. I wouldn't call any of the cases this week blockbusters,

but here they are. First up was Hall v. Hall. This is the case of Ethelon, Elsa, and Samuel Hall.

It's a messy family dispute over money and vacation property in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and it led to

dueling lawsuits in two federal district courts. So the two issues before the court in this case are

the effect of consolidating separate civil actions and whether they become a single action,

and how that affects the timing of an obligation to appeal. So the oral argument was a deep dive

into the federal rules of civil procedure. Fascinating. Yeah. But there was at least one moment of

levity. There's a Twitter account called Scotus Humor that looks for laugh lines in transcripts

of Supreme Court arguments. And they found one in this case.

Skoda's Humor points out that Chief Justice John Roberts got the only laugh of the argument by bringing up an amicus brief that was filed by seven retired federal judges.

Roberts said, do we imply the other 280 don't agree with it?

I don't know quite what to do with this brief. I love that

this is what retired judges do, like submit amicus briefs in their free time. Shouldn't they be

relaxing on a beach somewhere? This is like, I've decided in my retirement, I'm just going to

...