The Hello everybody. Welcome to this episode of After Dark.

Nothing good happens after dark, but we're here anyway.

With Alice, I'm Brett. We should definitely not still be up because Brett has court in the morning. It's going to be easy. I don't even know what awaits me. I have an whole argument next week. Do you really? Did it get pushed? Or has it always been on the book? It's always been on the books. I mean, in some ways, you've had unlimited time to prepare for it if the government's been shut down. In other ways, you probably haven't been working. Well, you know, I didn't exactly start preparing for it until today. Technically, anti-deficiency clause, you were not supposed to be able to work. Good point. So you, not clause, act. So you were just abiding by the law. I'm not really supposed to talk about my cases, but this is after dark, so whatever. But as far as we're like, I have no idea why we're going to oral argument. And that's the worst, because I feel like I'm going to walk in and the judges are going to be like, so this issue. And I'll be like, oh, shoot, that's why we're here? Well,

or as you probably know, some clerk didn't do their job and didn't properly vet the case. And then

you have a situation where the judges are like, why are we here? Well, let's just hope for that

situation. The dirty little secret about oral argument in circuit courts is, here's what happens. So there are judges called screener judges. They're all screener judges, right? They get these cases. They split them up. Yeah, they split them up. Whoever's a screener judge. You know, there's like hundreds of cases coming in. And so this case shows up and the judge reads it and they're like, and one of three things happens. Either, number one, they say, wow, this is a really interesting case that could affect the future of the law. We need to have oral argument on this case, right? That could be the first thing. Second thing is, wow, this is a real injustice. This can't stand. We need to have a little argument to address this. That's the second thing.

The third thing. Second thing is, wow, this is a real injustice. This can't stand. we need to have a little argument to address this. That's the second thing. The third thing and the thing that happens most often, I think, is the judge is like, man, I ain't got time to read this. Send it to oral argument, right? And they just send it to an oral argument because, dirty little secret, and one of the stupidest things they do in the court, if you send it to oral argument, you are not on the panel. So you get a case and you're like, man, these are some idiots. This is boring. This is maritime law. This is so boring. We have tax and I am bored. I am bored to death. These lawyers are dumb. The briefs are 100 pages. I don't want to read this. I ain't got time for this. Oral argument. And so then it just goes off to the next three judges who take it.

Now certainly none of the judges we clerked for ever did that.

Nor did we as clerks ever do that.

Nor would any of the judges that I appear in front of would ever do that.

Never would they do that.

But there definitely was this oral

argument that I was clerk for that was a hundred fifty page briefs on either side about

some like obscure seemingly inane maritime issue that we were like how does this affect us today

and not in 1821?

Yeah.

And the questions reflected it.

The judges were like, was there a dingy or a booey?

Yeah.

And we didn't know the answer.

And sometimes you get in there. And the good thing about being the government is usually you go second. So by the time you get up to talk, the other guys already endured 15 minutes of questions. So you have a pretty good idea. Is this real? If we can actually do this here or like, are we not here for any reason? And I can just get up and be like, yeah like yeah you know I agree with everything you've just said if you have any questions I'm

happy to answer I'm otherwise I'll sit down right so exactly okay so I have a really

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