Thursday, July 23, 2009

A Day Not on the Road

After getting back to Birmingham on Wednesday night, Thursday at lunch I was upstairs from my office at The Summit Club atop the Regions/Harbert Plaza to participate in a panel discussion on the effects of the Caperton v. Massey Coal decision, which the Supreme Court had rendered in June. In addition to myself, the panelists included J. Mark White, the Immediate Past President of the Alabama State Bar, Kevin C. Newsom, an appellate practitioner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Birmingham, and Harold See, former Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Interestingly, all of us had been signatories to amicus briefs in the Caperton case.

The panel included two amici who supported the petitioner (ABA and Mark White), and two who had supported the respondent (Kevin Newsome, counsel for several states, and Harold See). As expected, both Justice See and, to a lesser extent Kevin, criticized the opinion, although Kevin forthrightly admitted that he would likely be using it in filing recusal motions in his own practice.

I took the opportunity to remind the lawyers present that since 1996 Alabama has had a recusal statute on the books involving campaign contributions, with the limit being $4,000 for appellate judges and $2,000 for a trial court judge. The problem is that this statute has never been implemented, and no rules have been promulgated. Nevertheless, Alabama is one of only two states which has such a statute on the books, the other being Mississippi, and both statutes were cited by the Supreme Court in the Caperton opinion by Justice Kennedy.

The discussion was lively and went on for the better part of an hour. We even had Justice See and Mark White agree on at least two matters, which may be a first.

Now, I am preparing for the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago July 29-August 4, where I will pass the gavel to incoming ABA President Carolyn Lamm. This, this will be my last blog as ABA President.

If you want to follow the ABA Annual, however, I will be tweeting as TommyWellsABA on Twitter.