Thread by @marinklevy

There is a great deal to appreciate in the 5th Circuit's big opinion this week in Cargill v. Garland, upholding the federal bump stock ban.

But I want to note an important judicial administration move that the Court made that the brilliant @tnarecha & I wrote about last year ...

The Court noted at the end of its opinion that “Congress may wish to further clarify whether various novel devices qualify as machine guns for purposes of federal law.”

How did it propose letting Congress know? Through the little-known Statutory Opinion Transmission project ...

The brainchild of Robert A. Katzmann & Russell Wheeler, the Project established a protocol under which federal appellate judges might "send to Congress, without comment, opinions that describe possible technical problems in statutes," so that Congress may respond as it sees fit.

In the @CalifLRev, @tnarecha & I argued that the Project makes good sense b/c "among the many actors who may compete for Congress’s limited attention, the Judiciary is uniquely situated to timely identify potentially problematic text across the...U.S. Code for Congress’s review."

We concluded that the Project was being underutilized, and so ended with a reform that we thought was modest, but important - suggesting that federal appellate judges send more opinions to Congress.

And so it is heartening to see the 5th Circuit panel in Cargill doing just that.

For more on the Project, including its origins with Robert A. Katzmann & Russell Wheeler, the essay the great @tnarecha & I wrote, “Interbranch Information Sharing: Examining the Statutory Opinion Transmission Project” is here:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't say that @tnarecha is the very best co-author ever. This brilliant essay was his idea and it was an honor to work with him! (cc: @BerkeleyLaw) ❤️