Over the weekend I mused about how “the Court does not often ‘call for the views of Texas’ or ‘call for the views of California,’ even though those sophisticated litigants may also have something to say about a petition’s certworthiness.” Since then, a reader has helpfully pointed one fairly recent example of a CVTex: Rhine v. Deaton in 2009. Cert was denied, but before the Court did that, “[t]he Solicitor General of Texas [was] invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the State of Texas.” According to the good folks at SCOTUSblog, this request was “extremely rare” but they found “a handful of examples in the past few decades” of it happening. (If you are interested, here is the brief filed by Texas.) That got me thinking. How often does this sort of thing happen? How often does the Court call for the views of a nonparty (other than the United States)? How often does the Court allow a nonparty to participate in oral argument (again, other than the United States). Perhaps I’ll put this on my research list! This may be an interesting essay. Cf. William Baude, The Shadow Docket.

If you have examples, please email me. Thanks!

(As I explained in my post, the Court’s relationship with the SG’s Office is appropriate: “the Executive Branch is treated differently than other litigants because it is different.” But that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting.)