POTS DACA appeal - Change of tactics for firearms litigation?

The Supreme Court accepts a tiny, tiny fraction of the cases that people ask it to hear. The chances of it accepting a case where the petitioner is a private party who has not gone through the circuit court process is zero. Whether ther rules allow this or not, they're not going to take any.

This has to do with the fundamental job of the Supreme Court, which is not to fix decisions in individual cases.

627PCFan said:

Question for the legal scholars.

"The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it will appeal U.S. District Judge William Alsup's decision both to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and to the Supreme Court — something it admitted was a rare step.

“It defies both law and common sense for DACA ... to somehow be mandated nationwide by a single district court in San Francisco,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said."

My Question: If a govt. agency has the power to appeal to multiple courts at once to bring a quick resolution to the situation, why does the average citizen not? What is the difference and if he/she does could that be adapted to running future gun/law cases down in a more expedient manner?


Article Link:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...supreme-court-reverse-daca-ruling/1037459001/

Click to expand...

Major issue is scale. Government actions such as DACA or other regulations that affect large numbers of people are treated differently by the federal courts than something that affects one person.

First, standing is an issue, the federal government always has standing to challenge adverse court decisions from lower courts affecting government policy (e.g. separation of powers at play which does not apply to individuals). Individuals only have standing if they can show a measurable injury (not potential) in fact and under the law. Other court doctrines also come into play and to avoid a monograph, I am leaving out some that have less applicability to what the original post addressed.

In general, courts have a doctrine of ripeness and exhaustion that requires a full record to be developed by decisions at lower trial court levels (ripeness) with ideally several courts ruling on the same set of facts and law. Exhaustion means that people must exhaust all of their other options before going to court such as administrative appeals and so forth. The idea is that most decisions can and should be dealt with by lower courts with only a few cases going to the Supreme Court that have nationwide impact. Look up Rule 10 regarding U.S. Suprreme Court grants of certiorari.