Comments on: Ask the Author: More on the Impact of Pauper Status http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/ The Supreme Court of the United States blog Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:56:34 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Ryan Black http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/comment-page-1/#comment-10516 Ryan Black Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:15:54 +0000 http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/#comment-10516 Peter: I must confess I don't understand the impact of your criticism. To be sure, gathering data from a single source is certainly less time consuming than tracking down a hard copy of 400 individual petitions. I would argue that such efforts are quite unnecessary. In order for our choice to be a problem, it would have to be the case that there was some sort of systematic error in the information presented by the pool memos. We have no reason to suspect that such error exists. Moreover, even if there was some error, there are substantive reasons to prefer our approach, as well. Chief among them is the fact that the pool memo (and any subsequent markup made within an individual chamber) is the primariy material being used by most justices in determining how they will vote at the cert stage. Peter: I must confess I don’t understand the impact of your criticism. To be sure, gathering data from a single source is certainly less time consuming than tracking down a hard copy of 400 individual petitions. I would argue that such efforts are quite unnecessary. In order for our choice to be a problem, it would have to be the case that there was some sort of systematic error in the information presented by the pool memos. We have no reason to suspect that such error exists.

Moreover, even if there was some error, there are substantive reasons to prefer our approach, as well. Chief among them is the fact that the pool memo (and any subsequent markup made within an individual chamber) is the primariy material being used by most justices in determining how they will vote at the cert stage.

]]> By: Peter Goldberger http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/comment-page-1/#comment-10515 Peter Goldberger Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:05:02 +0000 http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/#comment-10515 Tom (and Jason): I did overlook Jason's very clear statment about Part I and Part II. I have apologized to Jason directly, via e-mail. Having now read Part II, I remain unimpressed with these grad students' methodology (relying exclusively on the clerks' cert memos as a source of pertinent facts about the petitions, when the original source documents, the petitions themselves, are readily available to resolve such questions as pro se vs. counseled) and their conclusions. Tom (and Jason): I did overlook Jason’s very clear statment about Part I and Part II. I have apologized to Jason directly, via e-mail.
Having now read Part II, I remain unimpressed with these grad students’ methodology (relying exclusively on the clerks’ cert memos as a source of pertinent facts about the petitions, when the original source documents, the petitions themselves, are readily available to resolve such questions as pro se vs. counseled) and their conclusions.

]]> By: Thomas Goldstein http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/comment-page-1/#comment-10514 Thomas Goldstein Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:22:47 +0000 http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/#comment-10514 Peter - As I think Jason's introduction made clear, this was Part 1 of 2. Peter – As I think Jason’s introduction made clear, this was Part 1 of 2.

]]> By: Peter Goldberger http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/comment-page-1/#comment-10513 Peter Goldberger Tue, 24 Oct 2006 02:10:54 +0000 http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/ask-the-author-more-on-the-impact-of-pauper-status/#comment-10513 Jason: I'm really sorry you didn't ask the question that Norma Chase and I were focusing on in our comments: Did they control for counseled vs. uncounseled among the IFP petitions? While it would be nice to be able to quantify "quality of lawyering," it's easy to count which petitions have lawyers of record and which don't. (I also question whether fee paid petitions really do "likely" exhibit a higher quality of lawyering across the board.) Did they control for presence of counsel, or didn't they? If they didn't, then they overlooked what my instinct suggests would be a major variable, and they can't claim to be looking at "all else equal." Jason: I’m really sorry you didn’t ask the question that Norma Chase and I were focusing on in our comments: Did they control for counseled vs. uncounseled among the IFP petitions? While it would be nice to be able to quantify “quality of lawyering,” it’s easy to count which petitions have lawyers of record and which don’t. (I also question whether fee paid petitions really do “likely” exhibit a higher quality of lawyering across the board.) Did they control for presence of counsel, or didn’t they? If they didn’t, then they overlooked what my instinct suggests would be a major variable, and they can’t claim to be looking at “all else equal.”

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