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Premier, most listened to hour on your weekends, Saturdays, the Noontime Drive, Iowa Law Talk, yes, Iowa Law Talk on KXEL 1540 and 100.5, the FM signal.
Out of Cedar Rapids, we are with Messers, Joseph Piper, J.D.
Esquire, that wonderful attorney out of the Cedar Rapids Metro,
from Ag and Business Legal Strategies, an uncommon law firm, and Nicholas Critelli, J.D.
Esquire, with offices in Des Moines and New York and London, as he is a vaunted English barrister in addition to his Iowa license shirt.
These two gentlemen come to you every week.
I'm John Jacobson, your moderator.
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Nick is a Drake law alum.
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Joe.
We're going to talk about a couple of neat things today.
I see just to wet the appetite, the Supreme Court on Thursday, I'm sorry, on Wednesday just added three more cases to its dockets.
So you might explain to me how they decide to add things on while they're currently in session.
Is that a common thing?
Do they do some ad hoc stuff?
What's going on with that?
Joe, is that emergency exigent case work?
What's going on?
Okay.
We've got several things going on.
The normal way that a case makes it to the Supreme Court is that there's been a petition for Rick of certiorari.
That means somebody who believes that the court could take it up, which might be an adverse ruling in a state Supreme Court, which has something to deal with the federal constitution or an appeal in a federal court that's gone from the federal court up to the
Circuit Court of Appeals, like in Iowa here, the A Circuit Court of Appeals, somebody who has been a litigant in that can file a petition for rid of certiorari, and then there can be a period of comment time, and some people can file briefs in support of it, and some people say that shouldn't be filed, then the court will decide whether it will accept the case.
Now, there's another thing that can happen.
is that you can have a dispute between two states, in which case the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction between the two states.
So that's another way.
And then, of course, we have this thing that we've heard a lot about since Trump's been present called the shadow doctor.
And the shock
about that, because many are very unfamiliar with that, Joe.
And I mean, this has been a great elevator speech primer already on
On con law and the register shirari and etc.
You're on a good roll here.
Let's go with it Joe continue so
and the shadow doctor is I Don't know a lot about it, but I know that we were hearing a lot on the news about it and that's where People are bringing things up that seem to be getting well some of the things that come up have been about the
the election and how you can change the districts within states.
And that's come up and come very quickly and it's on an expedited basis where that comes up.
So the shadow back is something that some of the justices are saying, you know, needs to be, we need to know more about it.
And is it appropriate that so many things should be coming to the Supreme Court on its
that docket as opposed to the regular buyer means a real assertion.
I'll do some more looking on that and we'll go back to that later.
But Springport, you know, they keep a fairly, you know, fairly busy docket.
They'll be meeting now until the end of June.
So they start the first of October, first week in October, they end the last week in June.
Typically, they don't hold cases that over.
If they've accepted them for this term, they'll be heard and decided this term.
So you're going to stop hearing many oral arguments, probably in mid-May to late-May.
That's going to be the last you're going to be hearing any arguments because they've got to write their decisions.
the bigger, more controversial decisions typically come down in the last week or two of the court, where they may have, they may be rewrestling, so to speak.
How are we going to decide this action?
Who's going to make the decision?
Who's going to write it?
And as I understand it, after the argument, the justices, before the argument, justices have not talked about the cases.
Each individual justice will have had the opportunity to read the briefs along with their law clerks.
And then they may have discussed it, but the judges themselves, justices themselves, don't discuss anything until after oral argument.
So they'll decide how they're going to be arguing and who's going to be asking what questions.
That's up to them.
And that's sort of a free-for-all.
And it's very interesting being in there.
in the Supreme Court watching oral arguments.
You're with
Joe Piper, guys.
I want you to know you're listening to the voice of Joe Piper, J.D.S.
Squire on Iowa Law Talk, talking about what's going on at the Supreme Court.
Joe, continue.
You're on a good thread.
When you're in the Supreme Court chambers and you're watching oral argument, you're all sitting there in small chairs side by side.
They're packing in like sardines.
Now, if you're a member of the Supreme Court bar, as I am, you're allowed to go in front of the bar and get closer to the justices.
If you're not a member of the Supreme Court bar, you're a member of the public, so you're behind the bar in the back half of the Supreme Court.
Now, if you're sitting in there, don't put your arm up all along a chair or on the bar itself.
the court security will come in and remind you that you are to keep within your own person.
Interesting.
The other thing, you have two metal detectors to get through there.
Really?
Yeah.
There's a lot of security in that thing.
You're going to go through if you've got a cell phone or you've got change or something.
You can, they'll let you run a locker and put your stuff in there and then you come in through the second round.
Fascinating.
This is inside scoop.
So Joe, very few attorneys are admitted to the US Supreme Court.
What was that process like for you?
Describe what you had to do because again, very few are qualified to hold that privilege.
I needed to become admitted when I wrote an amicus brief.
to the only Chapter 12 case that's gone to the Supreme Court.
Well, bankruptcy case, explain again what an amicus brief is, Joe, and Chapter 12 was the bankruptcy.
It's a farmer bankruptcy, and it's set up for family farmers.
And so, when I wanted to become a member of the Supreme Court bar, since I have been asked to write an amicus brief, an amicus brief is like a friend of the court brief.
And my job is to then find some people who wanted to express an opinion on this case as to what the court should do coming at it from the perspective not of either the United States of America or of the halls.
I was coming out and saying public policy would say, this is how you should decide and why you should decide it this way.
So to get admitted, I had to find
I had to fill out an application.
I had to find other members of the Supreme Court bar.
Mr. Crotally wrote one of the letters, and I found another person who was admitted to the Supreme Court, and then they vouched for me.
Nick is with us.
Nick, did you vouch for Piper?
Is this true?
Well, it's a two-step process.
I vouched for him, and then I went to confession afterwards.
Thank you very much, Nick.
So anyway, I got admitted to the Supreme Court and you can come in to the Supreme Court if you're admitted.
You don't have to have a case in front of the Supreme Court to be admitted to the Supreme Court law.
But you have to be admitted before you can submit a breach.
So I got admitted and I didn't go and actually get sworn in.
in front of the justices, which you can do.
And that would have been an interesting trip, but I need to get done before that.
So I quick got admitted and filed my break.
Here with Joe Piper and Nick Cratelli.
You know, Nick, I remember the mystique of Scotis as a young boy.
I would watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and...
i would see these supreme court arguments maybe it was the pentagon papers as a young boy uh watergate related pronouncements and never live audio only artists sketches and boy they were rough sketches they would put a little color on them but they were very rough hewn and that was that was the mystique of the supreme court now we can get you can pull up on your iphone or on your droid
or on your laptop or on your tablet, you can pull up the oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
We
still have
some art of sketching going on.
When are we going to get video, Critelli and Piper?
Nick, you first.
That's always a $64,000 question when you talk about the court system, particularly the federal court system.
is that we certainly want people to have access to see what goes on in our halls of justice.
But we don't want it to be disruptive.
And the concern is, is that live video is disruptive not only to the judges, whether the judges are a black-robed judge or a jury, which is a judge, but also to the witnesses and also to the litigants.
Now, I've been in cases, John,
where there was live video, and it does make a difference.
I mean, when the cameras are rolling and you think you're going to be on the news at night, you're a little more hesitant with respect to what you say or how you do it, or you go to the opposite extreme and become a showman, which is even worse.
So it does have, truthfully, kind of a negative effect, and I was in favor of
of live streaming all kinds of video with respect to the court system until I saw that the effect that it had on witnesses, jurors, judges, and so forth.
Right now the system's not broke.
The question that people have when they watch particularly Supreme Court arguments is why are we doing this?
It's a 60-minute argument.
Do your presentation.
Do you really have an opportunity during that short period of time to convince a judge or judges or justices whose minds may have been made up otherwise?
In other words, how effective and important is oral argument?
We ask that question a lot of judges and you get a variety of different answers.
Contrast that, if you will, John, to what goes on over in the UK.
where the arguments could go on for days.
And every aspect of the case is explored.
The dynamic between the judges and the barrister is much different than it is between the American justice and the American lawyer.
I won't say there's an adversarial aspect to the American vet.
And there certainly is a collegial aspect to the UK vet.
But the discussion there is more of a learned discussion of fine points of the law.
Over here, it doesn't seem to be that way.
There's a lot of argument.
There's a lot of emotion involved.
Joe, what's been your experience on that?
You see it in federal court a
lot.
I can tell you when I took a case of first impression on an appeal,
It was to a federal district court judge appealing a bankruptcy court order.
And that was in section, it was a deal with chapter 12 on the tax provisions in chapter 12.
Judge Mark Bennett set us for a three hour oral argument.
And he gave us a half an hour from his lunch that day.
He said, I want to hear this, I'm going to give you a half an hour of my lunch.
And we had four issues.
He said, whoever
Appealed issue one.
We're going to do issue one.
The person who appealed it will argue.
Then the other person will reply and then respond and then you get a reply argument.
He said, I want one issue at a time.
He said, I want to have a discussion about one issue at a time so my notes will be straight when I get ready to write the opinion.
That is the longest oral argument I've ever been involved with.
And it was akin to what you're talking about.
because he was asking what will be the effect if I rule this way?
What will be the effect if I rule that way?
Why should I rule this way or that way?
And it was an amazing discussion.
And it was literally a discussion back and forth with the Judge peppering us with questions.
I got to follow that up when it then went on appeal to the 8th Circuit.
I was involved in the argument that afterwards the A circuit judges gave a legal education presentation on effective advocacy in appellate settings.
I said, we want this to be a discussion.
Yes, you can have prepared what you'd like.
Be prepared to abandon it because we're gonna start preparing you with questions.
And they pointed out, said, yeah, Mr. Pfeiffer, you've got about 20 seconds in.
to your opening before we started prepping with your questions.
Frankly, I love it when they prep and deal with questions and that gives me the opportunity to see what they might be thinking and gives me an idea of where perhaps I can go.
If they merely let you make the argument you start out to make, they get concerned about are they really caring, are they really listening to me or not.
I much prefer having
a discourse with the court about whatever questions they have.
Now, when you're arguing in front of, you know, the Court of Appeals that typically you'll argue in front of three justices unless you have an in bond care in which case you have the whole court.
But what are the three judges there?
And any one of the three can ask you questions.
If in front of the Supreme Court, any one of the nine can ask you questions.
Sometimes you won't hear a word.
I mean,
I think Justice Thomas went for several years without asking a question.
I think he's gotten over his shyness lately.
He's asking a lot of pointed questions and I think it's good when you get pointed questions and they make you take this your argument to the logical extremes.
You know, this is fasting discussion and I was actually gonna go there I want to talk about styles and decorum depending on the different venues Joe what you just said Thomas just as Thomas was legendary for his reticence On the bench for for many years Kataji Jackson is known for being very interactive of late.
We've seen some
Decorus yet pointed barbs between the Justices, telegraphed in opinions, majority dissenting opinions of some bromides, maybe mildly vis-a-vis their colleagues.
And, you know, it's interesting, I'm just thinking stylistically, if you're an attorney there, what's the temperament needed for an attorney?
when you might have, well, I mean, Nick, you were acquainted personally with Justice Scalia.
He could be an intimidating intellectual force on the court.
What's the psychology of being in there?
Because what I want to wrap this up in is, it seems to me, just as a reminder, the Supreme Court is an appellate jurisdiction.
You're not trying a case first impression.
So the cases that I remember as a kid,
Charles Manson, Patty Hearst, even as a young adult, the OJ Simpson cases, there were always these swashbuckling attorneys that loved the camera.
William Kuntzler, Effley Bailey, Melvin Belli, who actually starred in an episode of Star Trek.
The original series is an evil malevolent devilish creature and just he reveled in his
role of people like Kardashian and Shapiro.
That doesn't work at the Supreme Court as much, does it?
And what is really needed personality-wise and temperament-wise in front of SCOTUS?
Joe, I'll start with you and go to Nick.
Joe.
Well, one of the things you're going to do is you're prepping for a Supreme Court argument.
In many instances, you will have done a mock argument.
Georgetown Law School has mock arguments that you can request.
And so in the case that I wrote the Amicus brief, I was invited to the mock argument by the lawyer from Arizona who was arguing the case.
So we had a lawyer who had presented in front of the Supreme Court on many occasions was one of the judges of the mock argument.
In addition, we had a couple of pros from Georgetown Law School and they
the three of them sat there and listened to argument.
And so that was fascinating because you're now getting somebody to mimic as much as you can the Supreme Court.
And Georgetown, when they're doing that, they will only take one side of the argument.
So if I applied first and asked Georgetown to set up a mock argument, if they accept me, they wouldn't accept Nick and he's on the other side of it.
Because they don't want to have any chance of anybody saying that you know, we're favoring one side or the other fascinating to one side, but it's a fascinating thing because then after the arguments over they then give critiques and then We talked about where were you stumped?
Where can we go from that and the three judges and give you critiques about different cases and they're they're coming as a hot bench
Now a hot bench means somebody who's read the briefs, who's read the record.
And when you're in the Supreme Court there, you have to remember this is a court of general jurisdiction.
It's not a court of limited or specific jurisdiction like the bankruptcy court, where we look primarily at the bankruptcy code and how that interacts with things.
The Supreme Court can hear cases over admiralty, bankruptcy, tax, contracts.
constitutional law, any disputes between states.
So they are going to get a kitchen sink of different things that we can be talking about.
By the way, Joe, I just got to interject.
I think my favorite course at Iowa College of Law was Admiralty Law.
Taught by the late great professor Sam far.
Ah, that
was incredibly entertaining and Man
learn a lot about Peru
Yes, I did.
That's yes.
I did and I'll tell you furthermore I learned that there is a lot of bad behavior done by not only pirates on those ships Hmm
But but yeah, you're right general jurisdiction Nick what about temperament to me?
It seems like a de novo trial attorney is a different skill set than an appellate attorney, but maybe a Skill of gentlemen as you two are you can be?
Breathe with both lungs as we say figuratively speaking Nick what say you
well Don't make too much out of this folks at the end of the day.
We're salesmen.
That's it first last and always salesmen
Now, I know lawyers don't like to hear that.
I wrote a book that tips for the American trial lawyer by an ancient Roman orator.
Where do I get this book?
Critelli, stop right there.
Where do you order
the book?
It's on Amazon, okay?
Now, I've got nothing but criticism about it because the book basically says, look, word sells people.
Okay, and we have to apply the rules of the sales salesman to what we do as lawyers and in what John I do trial trial work advocacy and that type of thing so John When I prepare a case for this I have to identify who my customer is Okay, what's what sister O taught us number one know your customer Okay, and then number two know your product
Okay, and fit the two together now That's all that we are and don't make any more out of this about this great lawyer who knows all the locks that are now in court It sales folks everything I learned in court room.
I learned by selling shoes at Yonkers now enter artificial intelligence This is the best thing since sliced bread.
Okay.
Here's here's here's the trick if you want the tricks here's the trick I do I do on YouTube
You can watch all the Supreme Court arguments So if you've got you know a case that's going before say the Iowa Supreme Court you go to YouTube and you put in two or three of the URLs to their arguments and Then you upload your briefs Okay, and you say You are the Supreme Court here are the briefs
Give me a series of questions that each judge would likely ask of you based upon what they've done in the past and their demeanor and the way that they act in the past and you'll get
We're gonna come back to that.
We're on Iowa law talk here on KXEL 1540 AM and 100.5 FM You
may continue your constructive argument mr. Critelli.
Well, so what it does is AI goes in takes a look at
at the URLs of the actual arguments that were made, and they know that, you know, justice so-and-so is very forceful, like a Scalia-type justice, so-and-so, other justices may be very quiet, et cetera, and it will come up with a series of questions in a style, a style, we're talking stylistic, John, that...
The judge would ask.
That was my question.
I'm about stylistics.
This is fascinating.
It's all stylistic.
So then you go to it, and he'll give you a nice printout of all it is based upon the briefs and the issues that it discerns.
And then you can flip it back and say, well, how would you respond to these questions?
And it'll give you suggested responses.
Now, folks, you can criticize AI all you want, all right?
But the fact of the matter is it's extremely useful if you know how to use it.
What I found is that it's probably 75% accurate, which is 75% more than I've had before.
In the past, I've actually got to go watch it myself, deal with it, come up to what this particular customer likes.
Now, if I'm arguing to a bench of, say, all of the Supreme Court, I was seven customers, and I got a tailor, my pitch,
to all seven customers.
Likewise, I got to know my product.
Now, as a trial, put it in the terms of a car salesman.
That good car salesman know their customers and they know their product.
They're not automotive engineers.
Automotive engineers make probably the worst salesman.
In this parallel, the automotive engineer would be the litigator.
You know litigator grabs every fact and nuance they can can't sell it, but they grab it all and analyze it Okay, then you hand it off to the barrister or to the trial or to sell it We're just salesmen John So we got to lose use all of the tools that salesmen have know your customer know your product But first and foremost what Cicero taught us is the customer has to like you if the customer doesn't like you
There is nothing you can do.
And the quickest way to turn a customer off is to do what we see every night on TV during the political season.
Badmouth the opponent.
You don't prove your case by badmouthing your opponent, by criticizing your opponent.
You prove your case by showing how strong it is.
Okay, that's why I get so upset over these debates,
Sean.
Oh, I decry them too.
Some of the Senate races, the ads are just beyond repugnant on both sides.
And as we said last week, we have to do much better.
Well, I'm always impressed by the decorum of the court.
It is very elegant compared with her other two branches of government.
And Joe did such a nice job at the beginning of the show talking about the process of how he came in and his experiences there in the great room.
not been inside the active court chambers.
I've been in the old chambers, and also I've been at the Supreme Court building, but not had the privileges that you gentlemen have had.
Nick, you have kind of a another privilege.
Maybe it's because of your Italian Catholic intellectual roots, but I believe you did get to spend some time with Justice Scalia and Cardinal Nichols over in Britain.
Is that a true statement?
Yeah.
Yeah, they had, you know, it's once again, I know you guys don't like hearing this, but to some extent it's a club, okay?
All professions are clubs in one relation or another, because we have one thing in common, our common goal is our love for the law and the seeking justice.
Now you may criticize all that, but at the end of the day, that's what it's about.
And you get to know these people as humans.
A good example is Gorsuch.
one of the most personal human beings I've ever met
in my
life.
My inner court in London, the Middle Temple, we refer to as an amnesty visit with the US Supreme Court about every three or four years.
The reason for that is that a lot of the American constitutional law was founded upon a British law which comes out of the Middle Temple, my inner court.
So we have a close relationship.
So the U.S.
Supreme Court hosts us.
So I was honored as a venture of my end of the Middle Temple on London to go over on behalf of the U.K.
along with other people.
And I happened to bring my grandson with me, Ian, and Joe you recall I think that time.
So we went over there and all of a sudden we had all these young people and they're like gone.
We're in the Great Hall eating dinner at the Supreme Court and all the kids are gone.
And so is Gorsuch.
Gorsuch had taken all those young students, taken them up to an area of the US Supreme Court building that humans can't go to.
It's called the highest court in the land, a basketball court, and was up there playing basketball with these young law students and pre-law students.
Now, that's a heck of a guy.
He's concerned about the future of our profession.
Now, the kids, of course, think that this happens every day.
You know, every day you go up in your shoe hoops with Justice Scorsese, and you
say, sure you do.
You know, they had no idea what they were doing, how privileged they were.
But I thought, this is the measure of the man.
He's concerned about the future of our profession.
Boy, it's too bad we can't replicate and make him commissioner of the WNBA.
But I digress.
Hey, Nick, I've always followed...
the writings, both majority and dissent, going back to, believe it or not, to my law school days, where Scalia even had opinions in the law books in the mid-80s, if you can believe it.
And Nick, what was your personal ruminations about Antonin Scalia?
Well, there's two answers to that question.
One is the persona that I hear in the legal press.
Now you got to keep in mind, John, I was from the liberal expanding constitution, or was referred to as the elastic constitution theory of constitutional law.
That
means that the constitution can expand by operation of the decision of the Supreme Court.
A good example is Roe v. Wade, where the court found a right of confidentiality
in the Constitution.
Now, there is no right of confidentiality in the Constitution, but the court read one into it.
And we all know that Scully and a lot of conservative judges were against that.
But under the expanding constitutional theory, you could stretch it.
This comes about on the Commerce Clause.
That anything that affects interstate commerce, Congress has jurisdiction.
So we had one of these cases at the Supreme Court.
This dealt with arson.
out of Clinton, Iowa, where my client allegedly chucked a pipe bomb through a window, landed on a couch in Clinton, and burned a like a cigarette butt hole in the couch.
He was promptly charged with arson federally.
So I looked at him, but wait a minute, where's the federal connection here?
Arson's a state crime.
There shouldn't be a federal crime.
The U.S.
attorney says, well, you know, that house is connected to the grid.
And the grid is goes to interstate commerce.
And if that house burns down, that adversely affects interstate commerce.
Therefore, Congress has the right to control, you know, that situation and with passing a crime of federal arson.
Now, I thought that went too far.
Does that mean that they can't use the internet?
What, Joe?
Does that mean that, you know, if the house burns down, they can't use the internet?
That's a connection.
Oh,
yeah.
I didn't like that at all.
So I thought that was ridiculous.
So in the case of US versus R-Line and McAllister, we took it up, said, this is gone.
We've taken the Commerce Clause and gone too far.
You've stretched it beyond where it needs to be and won it.
Okay.
It went too far.
Why we won it, John, is there had been a change in legal theory.
That expansion that we used of the Commerce Clause that we used to expand had gotten too far and Judges particularly the 8th Circuit and in the US Supreme Court were looking at it going wait We need to ratchet this back and of course we know they did in the McCollister case
in our line, and then eventually in the Dobs case.
So this is where Scalia comes in.
Scalia says, look, it's a contract.
It's not a piece of elasticity.
It's a contract between the people and government.
That's all the Constitution is.
And you have to apply contractual interpretation rules to determine what it means, statutory construction or contract construction.
Unlike most contracts, this one gives you ways to change it.
not one way of changing it, two ways of changing it.
So it has its own elasticity built in.
Now, when put that way, all of a sudden, that started to make sense, because Scalia was saying, look at the contracts that you have, whether it's with the Power and Light Company or the Water Company, whatever it is.
If we applied these theories to those contracts, you would never know what your bill would be.
It could be changed at all times.
So it's nothing more than the most important contract that we have as our Constitution.
Therefore, we should apply these concepts to it.
Somehow or another, that made sense.
It didn't before when I was younger, but it made a lot of logical sense.
And as a result of that, I started looking at both his opinions, Thomas'
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh's, and I'm going, yeah, they're solid.
They're really solid with respect to constitutional theories.
Sometimes I don't like the results.
All right.
There's some result-oriented things that I see come out.
But under my expanding constitutional theory, John, it was result-oriented too.
Very
much.
Fascinating.
Or solid.
It's more legitimate.
Then the expanded expanding
stuff
change my philosophy on
huh well in our last ten minutes.
I we've always done Retro analysis of the opinions they've come out but as Joe and I kind of introduced early on just Tuesday of this week of course if you follow scotus blog and the reporting by Howe and Dallas of the Supreme Court did add
Three new cases to its oral argument docket for this term agreeing to decide among other things What kinds of orders trial courts can issue and disputes over access to government information read doge and Whether working as a cook in a camp run by violent separatists qualifies as providing material support for terrorism
under federal immigration law.
And of course, we've got several of these cases that are going to be hashed through here.
The latter case that I talked about was basically the case known as Blanche versus Osirumba.
The first case, of course, involving Doge, is the case known as US Doge Service.
versus U.S.
court for the District of Columbia.
There is also a third case, which is Barry versus the United States, where the justices also granted review on whether a certificate of appealability, which is a prereq for appealing a decision that denies a request for post-conviction relief, may be granted to a prisoner whose claim is foreclosed by his own circuit's precedent
but would be allowed to proceed in a different circuit.
We've got some fascinating things that have been added.
Anything of interest to you guys or why this is so prescient right now?
Why this needs to be taken up right now, Nick?
Well, that's a good question.
As they build the docket going forward, we always look at these cases and we try to discern some meaning.
And more often than not, John, we default to politics.
Okay?
There's the political climate.
I looked at that doc, and I didn't see any of that, to be honest.
What I saw was a lot of hyper-technical stuff that quite frankly didn't trip my trigger at all.
Joe, what about you, sir?
I know you love the bankruptcy stuff, and there's so much going on right now.
Realistically, Joe, we've got to pay more attention to what the Iowa Supreme Court is doing.
They affect our lives on almost all levels.
You see, the U.S.
Supreme Court has very limited jurisdiction, John.
It doesn't have any jurisdiction over common law.
What's common law?
Contracts, torts, equity, all that stuff that affects everyday life.
Okay, the highest court in the land on that happens to be your state Supreme Court.
So I'm very much concerned about what they're doing.
Well, as as a young man who played the Indian Creek Country Club golf course in Marion, Iowa, Joe Piper, dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times with the late great Judge Bill Finnis, the case that I am following most closely is the argument between President Trump
and the judge who stayed the order on chopping down the Japanese cherry trees on the golf course renovation in DC.
Which way is that going to go, Joe Piper?
They're going to try to clip his wings.
You know, a word of warning.
We have three separate equal branches of government.
No one branch is superior to the other.
They all have to get along.
We've seen a lot of mission creep, John.
Not only with respect to the legislature and the president, but also the court system.
The court system is a vertical-based system.
You've got the Supreme Court at the top, you've got magistrates at the bottom.
It's it all three branches need to get their house in order They're all kind of mission creeping each other right now, and it's causing disrespect for the legal system
Well speaking of branching and branches.
It's ironic because the reason that the judge literally raised her voice For a protracted period of time vis-a-vis the Trump attorneys was because the Trump attorneys missive came very late on a Friday
Eve, and after being told not to chop down the trees, they indicated that a couple hundred had already been taken down and cleared away.
So I don't know what the remedy is.
If they have to replant those, Joe, what was the remedy there?
We can't put back that which they took.
Take a long time to get them back.
Didn't George Washington say something about this?
Well,
you know, the president does fashion himself as an expert in golf course design and management.
So, uh, you know, I
call something about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree.
Yes.
So there would be precedent in terms of cherry tree.
Uh, uh, anyway, time for final arguments, guys.
Uh, Joe on our way out.
What say you, my friend?
Well,
It's going to be interesting to see what the Supreme Court does in DC and the Iowa Supreme Court and the Iowa Court of Appeals.
Nick and I see a lot more of the Iowa Court of Appeals and the Iowa Supreme Court than we do the U.S.
Supreme Court.
There's not an absolute right to appeal to this U.S.
Supreme Court.
There is an absolute right to appeal from Iowa courts.
And in many instances, it will be assigned to the Court of Appeals.
And then you can ask for it to go to the Supreme Court if you're dissatisfied with the Court of Appeals.
But the thing to remember is you want to do your best job at the trial level, because you've got to be thinking about not only convincing the judge that you have, the trial judge, but you want to make a record so that if it has to go up on appeal,
that the judges at the next level will listen to it and be able to see your point.
So you can't just try it at one level.
When you try a case, you're trying it at two levels.
You have to think about that.
And I would agree with Cicero that you better know your customer and you better know your product.
And the better you know both your customer and your product, the better job you can do.
in sales at the district court level, the bankruptcy court level, and ultimately any appellate
level.
Great take, Joe.
Again, a reminder, write us at Iowa Law Talk at kxl.com.
Nick, you get the final word on Iowa Law Talk with Kritellian Piper on KXL.
Okay, folks, what we're talking about is important.
We're talking about systems of justice.
Now, this isn't anything new that started here.
I want you to go back to Noah and the Flood.
Okay?
Noah and the Flood.
There were some commandments that were issued.
They're called the Noahic Commandment.
Noahide Commandments.
There were seven of them.
Not the ten commandments that we get from Moses, but the ones that were given to Noah a thousand years before.
I think it was commandment number six.
was establish courts of justice.
Now you can have all the rules and laws that you want, but some entity has to administer it.
And that an entity has to have the respect of all parties.
And that entity has to respect all parties.
That entity
Courts and judges and officers of the court.
This is what we are has to respect all parties and when they don't Then you don't have justice.
So keep in mind what we talk about the court system here We're talking something that goes way way way back into antiquity at the time the The rainbow was born.
Let's put it like that.
That's how serious this is
Nick cartelli ladies and gentlemen yours truly prediction court watch
two weeks away and change midterm elections.
If the Democrats flip the Senate, look for Alito and Thomas to try to hang in for another four years well into their 80s.
If Republicans come up with a tie with Vance as the tiebreaker or retain Senate control, look for both Alito and Thomas to consider a retirement prior to the
next general election in order to resupply the strict constructionist pipeline side of the court.
We can talk about that next week as we continue our legal analysis of election laws and advertisements.
In the meantime, a great talk today on our courts at both the supreme levels nationally and statewide.
Thanks again to Joe Piper.
and Nick Cratelli for all of us here and our superb engineer, John Xavier.
Get to kxcl.com slash podcast.
Tell your friends about the show, listen live in the future.
If you can't get this tremendous AM signal, just go to your browser and type in Iowa Law Talk, KXCL, listen live.
In the meantime, John Jacobson here saying, be safe, be smart, be good, be strong.
Go Hawks!
Go Cyclones!
Go Bulldogs!
Go Panthers!
God bless everyone!
Bye bye!
Thank you for listening again to this episode of Iowa Law Talk with Nick Critelli and Joe Piper.
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