Friend-of-Court Filings Mushroom, and a Law Professor Takes Issue

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WASHINGTON — Not long ago, a law professor at Harvard received a routine request. Would he add his name to a brief from a group of law professors urging a federal court to uphold the health care overhaul law?

The professor, Richard H. Fallon Jr., said he would not, and his assessment of what he had been asked to sign was cutting.

“Its argumentation fell within the bounds of what lawyers could permissibly say in a brief,” Professor Fallon wrote in a provocative draft essay that has been circulating in the legal academy. But the brief’s presentation of the historical evidence, he said, “was not nuanced or balanced.”

“A purportedly scholarly book or article that asserted its claims without further qualification,” he wrote, “would attract derision as one-sided if not misleading.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/us/law-professor-takes-aim-at-supreme-court-filings.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23