|Wednesday was the day for oral arguments at the Kansas Court of Appeals in the case of Schlup vs. Bourdon, which has been in the courts since summer of 2003. I wrote a little about it in my other blog a while back. Fortunately, we didn’t get another blast of freezing rain that day, so the drive to Topeka was drizzly but uneventful. The Judicial Building is across the street from the Capitol. It doesn’t look very impressive from outside, but inside there’s a three story statue of “Kansas Justice”. As you get off the elevator on each floor you’re looking out over the atrium with the statue rising up. It makes up for the blah exterior. Arguments are limited to 15 minutes per side; if you’re first up you can reserve some of your time for rebuttal. The worst part is waiting to start, but once you get up and manage a couple of intelligent sentences it’s not too bad. Of course, they interrupt with questions, so you often don’t get your canned speech done. There are eleven justices on the Court of Appeals, but cases are heard by a panel of three; the Supreme Court has seven justices who generally sit en banc. Anyhow, I thought I did all right while my opponent crashed and burned. My client thought so, at least; and I noticed a few smiles from other lawyers in the gallery waiting their turn. But, you never know, especially these days as I’ve lost most of whatever faith I used to have in the ability of the legal system to uphold the rule of law and dispense justice based on merit. We should have a decision in a few weeks.|
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Day in Court
January 15, 2005
General
Comments Off on Day in Court
John
|Wednesday was the day for oral arguments at the Kansas Court of Appeals in the case of Schlup vs. Bourdon, which has been in the courts since summer of 2003. I wrote a little about it in my other blog a while back. Fortunately, we didn’t get another blast of freezing rain that day, so the drive to Topeka was drizzly but uneventful. The Judicial Building is across the street from the Capitol. It doesn’t look very impressive from outside, but inside there’s a three story statue of “Kansas Justice”. As you get off the elevator on each floor you’re looking out over the atrium with the statue rising up. It makes up for the blah exterior. Arguments are limited to 15 minutes per side; if you’re first up you can reserve some of your time for rebuttal. The worst part is waiting to start, but once you get up and manage a couple of intelligent sentences it’s not too bad. Of course, they interrupt with questions, so you often don’t get your canned speech done. There are eleven justices on the Court of Appeals, but cases are heard by a panel of three; the Supreme Court has seven justices who generally sit en banc. Anyhow, I thought I did all right while my opponent crashed and burned. My client thought so, at least; and I noticed a few smiles from other lawyers in the gallery waiting their turn. But, you never know, especially these days as I’ve lost most of whatever faith I used to have in the ability of the legal system to uphold the rule of law and dispense justice based on merit. We should have a decision in a few weeks.|
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