UPDATE: City gets delay to file gun appeal
on Jul 18, 2007 at 10:25 pm
UPDATE Thursday a.m.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., on Wednesday gave the District of Columbia government an extension of time until Sept. 5 to file its appeal challenging an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment by the D.C. Circuit Court. The opposition to the request for an extension was not received at the Court, at least not before the Chief Justice acted, it is understood.
Washington, D.C., residents who oppose the city’s strict handgun control law urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to move along, without delay, the city government’s appeal of a federal appeals court striking down that law under the Second Amendment. Invoking the half-century old admonitions of the late Justice Felix Frankfurter, the local citizens told the Court that it should not be difficult for city lawyers to promptly prepare their petition for review. The document can be found here.
The challengers to the local law told the Court that they”look forward” to supporting Supreme Court review of the case, but argued that the city’s appeal papers should be filed, as now scheduled, “no later than Aug. 6.”
The city on Monday asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., for a 30-day extension of the time to file the city’s petition in the case of District of Columbia, et al., v. Heller, et al. (extension application 07A51). The city argued that it had taken on additional attorneys who needed to become familiar with the issues, and that city officials had only recently decide actually to appeal the case.
Quoting a 1957 order of the Court (Brody v. U.S.), the local gun owners said Justice Frankfurter had remarked: “I cannot emphasize too strongly that petitions for certiorari all too frequently misconceive the true nature of such petitions — the considerations governing review on certiorari — and the manner of presenting them. It does not require heavy research to charge the understanding of this Court adequately on the gravity of the issue on which review is sought and to prove to the Court the appropriateness of granting a petition for writ of certiorari.”
In their filing, the local residents said that the city had stretched out the time for considering the case in lower courts, and argued that the city has had “five months to ponder an unopposed certiorari petition on a single question of law.” That, they said, “should sufficient….Petitioners should conform their litigation plans to the Court’s rules, and not the other way around.”
