Howard J Bashman

November 05, 2007 | Law.com

There are federal appeals court decisions that are published, those that aren't published, and then, in some very rare instances, there are those rulings the courts post online, only to reverse direction some hours later. Appellate litigator Howard J. Bashman gives a behind-the-scenes tour of the last type of ruling and explains how the information came to be available on his "How Appealing" blog.

By Howard J. Bashman

9 minute read

December 11, 2006 | The Legal Intelligencer

The Superior Court recently ruled that an individual who intentionally visited Web sites in order to view child pornography, but who did not intentionally save those images to his computer's hard drive, could not be convicted for possessing images that were automatically saved to the computer's hard drive as a result of how a Web browser's cache function operates. That ruling strikes me as badly mistaken, for reasons that I shall explain.

By Howard J. Bashman

9 minute read

October 15, 2007 | Law.com

Each year, a small crop of highly credentialed law school grads arrives at the U.S. Supreme Court to serve as law clerks for the justices. Among their duties: analyzing whether petitions for writ of certiorari are meritorious and should be granted. In this commentary, appellate litigator Howard J. Bashman weighs in on the continuing controversy over the high court's cert pool and its possible hazards.

By Howard J. Bashman

5 minute read

December 11, 2006 | Law.com

In this commentary, appellate litigator Howard J. Bashman examines decisions by 7th Circuit Judges Richard A. Posner and Frank H. Easterbrook and their response to attorneys who fail to comply with circuit rules or the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. In one particular majority opinion of note, Posner asked rhetorically, "Are we being fusspots and nitpickers in trying ... to enforce rules?" Bashman provides his own answer to that question.

By Howard J. Bashman

9 minute read

November 06, 2006 | Law.com

A familiar refrain in court nomination battles is that federal appeals judges have the ability to implement their personal views of the law, and that those views should be ascertained and examined during the confirmation process. Litigator Howard J. Bashman writes that a much more interesting consideration is: To what extent does a federal appeals court judge's job, when properly performed, actually require a judge to implement those personal views?

By Howard J. Bashman

5 minute read

January 10, 2005 | The Legal Intelligencer

Preserving issues in the trial court for purposes of appeal is of utmost importance, but a recent decision from the Superior Court of Pennsylvania establishes that preserving an inordinate number of issues can be counterproductive.

By Howard J. Bashman

7 minute read

September 08, 2008 | The Legal Intelligencer

Appellate judges and the lawyers who handle appeals might occasionally wish that an appellate court could decide a particularly fascinating legal issue in the abstract, unconstrained by the facts and circumstances of the case in which the issue arises.

By Howard J. Bashman

8 minute read

March 13, 2006 | National Law Journal

Conservative commentators erupted in glee after the U.S. Supreme Court last week unanimously rejected a coalition of law schools and law professors' First Amendment challenge to the Solomon Amendment, which governs military recruiters' access to university campuses. But attorney Howard J. Bashman writes that, when a case is litigated as a matter of principle, even an 8-0 loss can represent a measure of success in the court of public opinion.

By Howard J. Bashman

7 minute read