Supreme Court Determines That Traditional Stay Continues to Be Available to Aliens Appealing from Removal Orders

As I blogged about previously, in January the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of Nken v. Holder, which raised the question of whether the 1996 amendments to judicial review provisions that removed the automatic stay of deportation pending appeal had replaced the automatic stay with a traditional stay standard or a heightened, extremely restrictive standard, one that almost never would allow a stay.

Today, in a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice Roberts, the Court announced its decision in favor of the alien, determining that the disputed 1996 statutory provision did not take away the appellate courts’ traditional stay power in appeals pending deportation.

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Why Century School Book Is Better for Your Brief Than Times New Roman

Students, would you like to make it easier for your professors to retain the information presented in your typed assignments, papers, briefs, and tests?

Professors, would like to retain more of the information that your students are presenting to you in their typed assignments, papers, briefs, and tests?

Then please read what the Seventh Circuit has to say about its “Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers.”

For starters, “[t]ypographic decisions should be made for a purpose. The Times of London chose the typeface Times New Roman to serve an audience looking for a quick read. Lawyers don’t want their audience to read fast and throw the document away; they want to maximize retention.”

Students don’t want their audience (professors) to read fast and throw the document away either. Maybe the fallback format requirements of “15 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman, one inch margins” shouldn’t be the fallback? What else does the Seventh Circuit have to say about our old friend Times New Roman?

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Long Live the Apostrophe

One of the punctuation marks that causes students the most confusion is the apostrophe. I see plural nouns with apostrophes and possessive nouns without them, and sometimes I just see random apostrophes thrown into any old word that includes an “s.”  I see “it’s” and “its'” when the writer really intends to use “its.”  My students’ current writing assignment involves plaintiffs named Vincent and Cheryl Simms.  In reading students’ drafts, I have seen “Mr. Simms injury,” “Mr. Simm’s injury,” “Mr. Simms’ injury,” and “Mr. Simms’s injury.”  (Just in case any of you are reading this post, I prefer Simms’, though I would also accept Simms’s.)  Some students have simply given up and written “the injury suffered by Mr. Simms.”  I don’t mean to criticize my current students; I have noticed the same issues over the past several years, and my students, past or present, are not alone.

The city council in Birmingham, England, has banned the use of apostrophes in its street signs.  Evidently, the council members grew tired of using their meetings to debate whether various street names should include apostrophes.  One council member was quoted by MSNBC as follows:  “Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed.”  He continued, “More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don’t want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it.”  You can read more about the council’s decision here.

Not everyone has thrown in the towel, however. 

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