Welcome to the new bar year for the Appellate Practice Section! While you were weathering this oppressive summer, you may have missed out on some interesting appellate news. Let’s catch up.

Hail to the chief. Judge Albert Diaz was installed as the new Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit. Judge Diaz keeps his chambers in Charlotte. Before his appointment to the federal bench, he served our state as a Business Court Judge. Here’s the Court’s full press release. Congrats!

Full-court press. Past chair James Kilbourne noted a fascinating order from the Fourth Circuit denying en banc review. For anyone seeking insight into the en banc proceeding in that Court, and how those judges look at the process, you’ll want to see the competing views.

Pipeline kerfuffle. In other Fourth Circuit news, there was an interesting kerfuffle in that Court over a federally permitted pipeline. The Fourth Circuit has repeatedly invalidated efforts to create the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Congress apparently felt differently about the legitimacy of the permits. In recent legislation, Congress stripped the Fourth Circuit of jurisdiction to hear further claims about the permit and essentially ordered the permit to issue. When the permit issued, the Fourth Circuit stayed issuance of the permit anyway. The U.S. Supreme Court then stepped in, vacating the stay, and not-so-vaguely suggesting that it would issue a writ of mandamus if the Fourth Circuit didn’t step out of the way. The Fourth Circuit then backed down but issued a trio of opinions noting its protest. Prof. Jonathan Adler, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, has a good analysis of the case.

Goodbye to Judge Dave of Rainbow People Fame. Moving further north in the federal system, Judge David Sentelle, of the D.C. Circuit, has retired. Justice Bob Edmunds has offered some fun reminiscences about Judge Sentelle over at Fox Rothschild’s Appellate Blog.

A long budget negotiation. The two chambers of the General Assembly have still not been able to reach a budget deal. That matters to appellate attorneys because the Senate’s budget has some important judicial changes. Besides a 15% pay bump for appellate judges, the Senate budget would also eliminate dissent-based appeals of right. You can find a good breakdown here.

Other changes in the proposed budgets would increase the mandatory retirement ages for justices of the Supreme Court. For now, those changes only matter for Chief Justice Paul Newby and Associate Justice Mike Morgan.

Farewell for now? But in other judicial news, that change, if it becomes law, won’t matter for Justice Morgan. He announced on Twitter (or are we calling it X, now?) that he won’t run for reelection. But he may not be leaving politics behind. Instead, he told the News and Observer that he’s considering a run as a Democrat for Governor. That’ll pit him against current Attorney General Josh Stein in next year’s primary.

As for Justice Morgan’s to-be-vacated seat, I’m not aware of any Democrats that have declared a run. But Judge Jefferson Griffin, of the Court of Appeals, is campaigning for that seat as a Republican.

Supreme Court roundup. Moving along to that other Supreme Court, up in D.C., I have a short summary of the opinions from this past term over at Lawyers Weekly.

That’s it for now. If you see other news worth spreading, shoot me an email at [email protected].

August 24, 2023/by Appellate