When Dan Schweitzer reads a brief that refers to the U.S. Supreme Court as “this Honorable Court,” he said, “It has me pulling my hair out.”

As the Supreme Court counsel for the National Association of Attorneys General for the last 21 years, Schweitzer has read thousands of briefs and has helped edit many. He knows the norms and traditions of brief-writing at the court, and knows that the customary way to refer to the U.S. Supreme Court in a brief is “this Court.”

For some reason, lawyers from Louisiana—though not from the attorney general's office there—tend to use the honorific, according to Schweitzer. “Maybe Louisiana courts like to hear themselves referred to as 'honorable.' But this stilted language is out of place in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Schweitzer offers that advice in a new style guide, available free online, for advocates who write Supreme Court briefs. It is full of tips that are not hard and fast rules but, as with ditching “this honorable court,” help advocates show that they know what justices like or don't like.


Dan Schweitzer

“Sometimes, non-regulars don't do it the way regulars do it,” said Schweitzer in an interview. “To be fair, there are a lot of lawyers who are so busy. If you don't live in that [Supreme Court] universe, it might not strike you to do it a certain way.”

The high court is not petty enough to reject briefs that don't conform to its unwritten preferences. But Schweitzer said that doing it right adds to “the aura of credibility” that advocates covet, especially when they are filing with the Supreme Court.

The guide is already winning kudos from court practitioners, like John Elwood of Vinson & Elkins who called it a “good nuts and bolts” guide. “It's a pleasant surprise that people outside the state AG community are looking at it,” Schweitzer said.

Through guides like this one, Schweitzer has been a key player in the improvement of Supreme Court advocacy by state parties in the last decade or so. Under his supervision NAAG also offers moot courts for every lawyer representing a state who argues at the court. The trend of hiring state solicitors general has also helped. State attorneys general who were more expert in politics than in appellate advocacy used to embarrass themselves from time to time by taking on a Supreme Court argument. But more and more are turning over the task to state SGs.

Here are five of Schweitzer's pithy style tips:

â–º “Don't refer to the lower court decisions in your very case by the case name. Let's say, for example, that you're seeking certiorari from the Ninth Circuit's decision in Smith v. Jones. The cert petition should not say, 'The Ninth Circuit held in Smith v. Jones that …' That's like my saying, 'Dan thinks that's a good idea.' It sounds wrong to the ear (at least the ear of a regular Supreme Court practitioner). The better style is to say, 'The Ninth Circuit held below that … ,' or simply 'The Ninth Circuit held … .'”

â–º “Limit the use of block quotes. The occasional, relatively short, block quote is fine. Inserting block quote after block quote is not. Nor should any block quote take up more than half a page. As Justice [Antonin] Scalia and Bryan Garner have written, 'Be especially loath to use a lengthy, indented quotation. It invites skipping. In fact, many block quotes have probably never been read by anyone.'”