What is the Supreme Court Bar, anyway? What do you have to do to get called to the Supreme Court Bar?
The Supreme Court Bar is the group of lawyers admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States. If you are not a member of its Bar, you can’t appear as Attorney of Record in a case before the Supreme Court.
I don’t know how it works in Canada, but in the U.S., many individual courts have separate bars to which a lawyer must be admitted. As a member of the New York State bar, I can participate in any state court, but the federal courts in the state. I had to be separately admitted to the bar of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (including the Bankruptcy Court), which required my filling out a bunch of paperwork, having a lawyer already admitted to the court sponsor me, getting a certificate I was in good standing in the state bar, paying a fee, and appearing before a district judge for a formal swearing in. The Eastern District and the Southern District have a program where a lawyer formally admitted to one doesn’t have to go through the whole process for the other. To get in to the Eastern District, I just had a certificate of admission from the Southern District in Manhattan, take the subway across the river to the Eastern District courthouse in Brooklyn, fill out a card, and, of course, pay my fee. If I wanted to get admitted to the Northern District (Albany) or the Western District (Buffalo/Rochester), I would have to go through the whole mildly annoying process. By way of contrast, when I was admitted to the New Jersey bar, they had a District Judge there who swore us into the federal District of New New Jersey bar.
For the federal Courts of Appeals, the admission requirements vary. For the Second Circuit (NY/CT/VT), in addition to the usual paperwork and fee, they require that you have argued at least three appeals, six substantive motions, or some combination thereof, before you can be admitted. Some other Circuits simply admit you when you first bring a case up to that court (and pay the fee). Specialized federal courts (e.g. the Tax Court) have their own requirements.
The U.S. Supreme Court is just another court that a lawyer must be admitted to the bar of before practicing there. The only requirement of any substance is that you have been admitted to a state bar for five years (and you pay the $100.00). Unlike many other courts which require you to get certificates of good standing from each other court (or at least state bar) to which you are admitted, the USSC only requires a single state bar certificate of good standing. You have to get a member of the bar to sign your application, and I believe another to co-sign (in my case, it was professors at my law school in connection with the group admission), and that’s about it. You can be admitted on written motion, in which case you send in your paperwork, your admission is noted in the Journal of the Supreme Court, and they mail you a certificate. You can also be admitted in person, in which case you mail in your paperwork, they tell you when to show up, you appear before the Court, the Clerk (in morning dress) reads your name, you raise your hand, the Chief Justice swears you in and welcomes you to the bar, and you get your certificate in the mail. As was mentioned, the Court has law schools and other organizations do group admissions, in which the allow you to gather in a reception room, come in to court together, and generally make it a lovely experience.
As to why, there isn’t really a good reason except to get the certificate which you can hang on your wall if you wish (I don’t have any of my certificates hanging) and the ability to sit in the bar section of the Court to hear oral arguments. There is, I suppose, the unlikely possibility that you will have the opportunity to bring an appeal before the Court (or defend an appeal there), but I expect that in that case if you are not admitted then, Supreme Court Bar admission can be taken care of pretty quickly. I do recall, however, seeing one of the lawyers in my old firm looking slightly ashen one Friday afternoon and saying that Justice Scalia’s chambers had just called him about an emergency motion for a stay that our opponent had filed in a case, but I think that after his chambers called, Scalia looked at the papers and denied the stay without requiring formal opposition. I suspect that in those sorts of cases, they don’t get too caught up in formal bar admissions until the emergency stay is resolved.
Interesting.
Up here, each province and territory has a Law Society (Quebec has two, one for advocates and one for notaries), which determine whether you are admitted to the bar. The courts don’t have any role in it, and there’s not a separate bar for each court. So once admitted, I have the right of audience in every provincial court in my province.
There’s no separate federal law society or bar. The Federal Courts Act and the Supreme Court Act both provide that anyone who is a member in good standing in a provincial or territorial law society has the right of audience in those courts. There are no graduated requirements based on years at the bar or previous litigation experience to appear in the Federal Courts or the Supreme Court - once you have your ticket from the Law Society, you can go wild in those courts. Subject to the rules of contempt, of course.
How do you get that experience before you’re admitted? by junioring to a member of that court’s bar? or do they mean that you have to practise first in the state courts?
Does the legal system up there (in Canada) work more smoothly than here in the US? I mean does it take forever for a case to wend it’s way through the courts?
Peace,
mangeorge
In the U.S., most (all?) state bar admission is controlled by the state Supreme Court or some other organ of the state court system. Usually, state bar admission means you can practice in all state courts. Most of the time it isn’t too much of an issue to get admitted to the local federal courts, mostly an administrative hassle (and a modest fee). For something like the Second Circuit, they expect you to get the experience in the state courts or federal District Court (and it doesn’t take too long to get six motions under your belt). They also have some exemptions, so it isn’t much of a burden for anyone who would be likely to have an appeal come up to the court. It is mostly annoying paperwork you have to to once in your carrer the first time you have a matter in a particular court.
Lawyers who work for the Federal government (as asst. U.S. attorneys and as counsel for various departments and agencies) don’t have to be separately admitted in each state, just in one, and then remain an attorney in good standing there. I remember reading a case about that in law school; no cite, sorry.
Delays are endemic in any court system - because of the multiple steps in both civil and criminal process, that are designed to ensure that the issues are thoroughly canvassed, extraneous matters are excluded, and the court actually only focuses on the point in dispute.
For example, in the civil litigation process, there are a large number of pre-trial steps. The purpose of those pre-trial steps is to ensure that there are no surprises - that both sides know which facts are uncontroverted and which are in dispute, that both sides can determine which legal points are in issue, and so on. Similarly in the criminal process, the system is designed to allow the police and the prosecutor to weed out cases that don’t meet the relelvant standards for a prosecution, and for the defence to know exactly what case they have to meet.
All of this takes time, and that time is not necessarily a sign of a system in trouble. For example, one stat that I’ve heard in Canada is that of all the civil Statements of Claim issued, less than 5% will lead to a full trial, with a judge or jury ruling on the merits. The others drop out along the way, as the parties realise they haven’t got a case or settle, as they get more information about the other side’s response.
I’ve not seen any comparative stats on the speed of the Canadian and American systems, but my purely personal impression is that major criminal cases may get to trial in the States more quickly than they do here.