Check the Invitation: The Trouble with Appeals Invited by Supreme Court Justices

This Article proceeds in four Parts. First, it categorizes invited appeals into the two species discussed above, soft invitations and opinion-briefs, providing a growing catalogue of the latter. In the next two Parts, the Article normatively analyzes those invited appeals, concluding that, while soft invitations have many laudable qualities, opinion-briefs are extremely troubling. Lastly, the Article offers specific advice for practitioners who encounter opinion-briefs, like death penalty abolitionists determining their next move in the wake of Breyer’s Glossip opinion, arguing that they should not accept the authoring Justice’s invitation.

Patience is more prudent than accepting an opinion-brief’s request for specific arguments