Law Students Prevail Again in High Court
The Supreme Court’s decision Monday that individual retirement accounts are protected from creditors in bankruptcy cases marks the second time in less than a week that a small group of Stanford University law students has won a change in U.S. law.
Their first victory came Wednesday, when the justices expanded the rights of older workers to sue for age discrimination. That decision came in a Mississippi case that was appealed to the high court through the students’ efforts
“It can’t get any better than this,” Stanford law professor Pamela S. Karlan, one of the founders of the law school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, said Monday after learning of the unanimous ruling in the bankruptcy case.
Two years ago, Karlan and Washington lawyer Thomas C. Goldstein had the idea of creating a law clinic that would allow students to learn about the Supreme Court by working on real cases. It was limited to nine students a semester.
Goldstein and his wife and law partner, Amy Howe, specialize in finding legal issues that have divided the lower federal courts. Such legal splits are exactly the kind of dispute the Supreme Court seeks to resolve.
And with the help of the litigation clinic, Goldstein and Howe could offer to represent some of these clients at no charge.
Last year, Goldstein spotted the case of Richard and Betty Jo Rousey. The couple had lost their jobs in California in 1998 and moved to Arkansas, where they filed for bankruptcy. When a trustee for their creditors sought to seize their only savings -- their individual retirement accounts -- a bankruptcy judge and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the money could go to their creditors.
But Goldstein knew that courts elsewhere had taken the contrary view. “We spoke to their lawyers in Arkansas and we said we thought this was an important case that raised a significant legal issue, and we volunteered to work on their case for them,” Karlan said.
“We did a little bit of everything,” said Mara Silver, a third-year law student.
First, the students drafted the petition that asked the justices to review the Rouseys’ case.
Only about 1% of appeal petitions are granted, but the high court voted last spring to hear the case of Rousey vs. Jacoway.
Over the summer, other students worked on the main brief to the court. In the fall, they helped Karlan -- who argued the Rouseys’ case before the high court in December -- with research on complicated bankruptcy laws and their many exemptions.
“This seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on a case in the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Eric Feigin, a third-year law student who helped draft the successful appeal in the bankruptcy case. “It felt good to be representing the Rouseys because an IRA is an enormous chunk of their savings, and thanks to this ruling, they will be able to keep it.”
The age discrimination case also arose from a split in the lower courts. Last spring, the Stanford students drafted an appeal on behalf of Azel Smith and some older police officers in Jackson, Miss., who had sued the city for age bias after it awarded more generous raises to officers with less than five years on the job. But a federal judge and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans tossed out the claim, ruling that workers older than 40 could not sue unless they had proof of intentional discrimination by their employer.
In their appeal, the students pointed out that several lower courts had allowed such claims to be heard.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court adopted the broader view of the age discrimination law in a 5-3 ruling in Smith vs. City of Jackson. However, the justices also upheld the city’s pay policy, saying it was a reasonable effort to attract more young officers.
“The operation was a success, but the patient died,” Karlan said. “This was a major victory on the law, but not for our clients.”
It is not unusual to have favored students help a law professor prepare to argue a case in the Supreme Court. But Stanford officials say the Supreme Court clinic is the first law class devoted entirely to having students work on cases in the court.
The students await the result in one more case pending this term. It tests whether the federal law that protects disabled people from discrimination extends to foreign cruise ships that operate from U.S. ports.
In the fall, Goldstein and the Stanford students appealed on behalf of Douglas Spector, a Texas man who said he was charged a higher fare and given second-class treatment because he used a wheelchair. He sued the cruise ship company, but the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out his claim, saying the U.S. law did not travel on the high seas.
The Stanford students filed an appeal, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear Spector vs. Norwegian Cruise Lines. In February, Goldstein urged the justices to rule that American law should protect the rights of Americans who take vacation trips that begin and end in U.S. waters.
