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To Cert. Or Not To Cert.

By James M. Beck and Mark Herrmann

Back in the antedilvuian days when we were in law school, the practice we learned was to include Supreme Court denials of certiori as subsequent history when citing cases in briefs. We've pretty much been doing it ever since.

Lately, however, we've seen a lot fewer "cert. denied"s in the briefs other legal stuff we've been reading. Within the last month we've (well, one of us) had a conversation with a lawyer we think highly of who told us that he thinks some courts affirmatively don't want "cert. denied" added to citations, since such denials are of no precedential effect - which as a substantive matter is true.

So maybe it's time for "cert. denied" to join the second person familiar, words like "whereinbefore," the comma before "and," and distinctions between "who" and "whom" in the dustbin of grammatical history

So we thought we'd ask you, our readers, what you think of this burning issue. Do you include "cert. denied" in your citations and why?

It's Friday, so you should have come to expect this kind of thing from us by now.

Full post as published by Drug and Device Law on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).