Most Important SCOTUS Decision Last Term

Michael Dort wrote in August The Supreme Court Wreaks Havoc in the Lower Federal Courts--Again.

"Can you name the most important Supreme Court decision of the last Term? Was it Gonzales v. Carhart, the ruling upholding the federal Partial Birth Abortion Act? Or how about Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, which invalidated the voluntary use of race by public school boards in Kentucky and Washington? Not even close, at least by one important measure: How many times has the ruling been cited by the lower federal courts?

According to my WestLaw research at the end of last week, the partial-birth abortion case had been cited 11 times since it was decided in April, and the schools case had been cited just twice since it was decided in late June. In contrast, the hands-down winner for most-cited was Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. Since the case was decided in late May, it has been cited by the lower federal courts a whopping 457 times.

The Twombly case, as I explain in this column, concerns the standard to be used by federal district judges in deciding whether to dismiss a lawsuit before allowing the plaintiff to conduct civil discovery (interrogatories, depositions, document requests and the like). It is fundamentally about what we might call "lawyer's law." However, the case was produced by a Supreme Court whose Justices have had very little trial court experience.. Unfortunately, here and elsewhere, that lack of experience sometimes shows."

The rest of the article is long but I found it interesting.