A Biglaw Associate's Big Supreme Court Victory
Congrats to Amir Ali, a fifth-year associate at Jenner & Block, on prevailing in his debut argument before SCOTUS.
Amir Ali, on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court after his argument in Welch v. United States.
Last month, we shared with you the story of Amir H. Ali, who got to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court as a fifth-year associate at Jenner & Block. It’s not common for Biglaw associates to argue before any court, to say nothing of the highest court in the land, so Ali’s story was many an associate’s dream come true.
And yesterday the dream got even better. Just like his mentor, Jenner partner Lindsay C. Harrison, who argued before SCOTUS as an associate and won by a 7-2 margin, Ali also scored a decisive victory.
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The Court handed down its opinion in Welch v. United States before hearing argument in the high-profile immigration case of United States v. Texas, and Gregory Welch and his team at Jenner prevailed. The opinion came less than three weeks after oral argument — very fast turnaround by SCOTUS standards. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion of the Court for seven justices; Justice Clarence Thomas filed the lone dissent. (Perhaps Justice Thomas was persuaded by his former clerk, Gibson Dunn partner Helgi Walker, who was appointed by the Court to argue the other side of the case after the federal government sided with Welch.)
I chatted last night with Amir Ali about his win. Here’s a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our conversation.
DL: Congratulations! How do you feel?
AHA: Thanks! It feels great — a real honor to have been involved in this experience. And we’re so happy to deliver a positive result for our client.
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DL: The oral argument seemed to go well for you (although Helgi Walker also did a great job arguing her side). How did you feel about it right after it ended? Elated? Relieved?
AHA: I certainly felt a sense of relief, after having prepared for so many weeks, to let some of this complicated retroactivity law exit my brain. Then the waiting game started — along with trying not to read too much into any justice’s questions.
DL: Some observers, such as Professor Rory Little writing on SCOTUSblog, predicted based on how the argument went that you would prevail. Did you expect this outcome?
AHA: We had no shortage of predictions internally and externally, and certainly some observers thought we’d prevail. I just tried to take the position that we’d have to wait and see the what the Court had to say, especially in this complex and intricate area of law.
DL Did the 7-1 split of the justices — or anything in the opinions themselves, such as Justice Kennedy’s authorship or Justice Thomas’s decision to dissent — catch you by surprise?
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AHA: What surprised and impressed me the most was how the Court was able to issue such an in-depth and clearly well thought-out and reasoned opinion in such a short period of time. I didn’t have a sense from argument that any justice seemed more interested than the others in writing the opinion. And I didn’t have any questions from Justice Thomas, so I had no reason to think that he’d rule one way or the other.
DL: Justice Alito gave you a bit of a hard time on whether the core issue of this case was properly raised before the district court, but then he joined the Court’s opinion.
AHA: So I like to think my responses satisfied Justice Alito — but of course I’ll never really know.
DL: The Court scheduled an unusual hand-down today. As explained by Lyle Denniston, “Ordinarily, when the Court is hearing argument on Mondays, it releases only orders in new cases, and withholds opinions until later in those weeks.” So observers speculated that they’d hand down a case with some time sensitivity.
In Welch, of course, the Court expedited the briefing schedule and sped things up — because, as we discussed earlier, the statute of limitations for prisoners to raise the retroactivity of Johnson v. United States will expire soon.
Did you have a feeling that the opinion to be handed down today might be your case? Were you and Lindsay in Court this morning?
AHA: Lindsay and I were in Court this morning, yes. We had already intended to attend the argument in United States v. Texas. When we learned of the possibility that the opinion would be issued, we doubled down on our intent to attend.
So I was there when the opinion was issued. It was very exciting to have the honor of hearing Justice Kennedy read the Welch opinion from the bench.
And it was interesting and special for me for another reason as well. Before the justices entered the room, the front row of the public gallery was vacant. Right before the justices entered, the Chief Justice of Canada and several of her colleagues came in to fill that row. I clerked for the Supreme Court of Canada, so it was wonderful to have some of the justices I knew in court this morning when my case was decided. (But my boss, Justice Marshall Rothstein, was not present; they have mandatory retirement in Canada, and he retired last year.)
DL: So United States v. Texas, argued after the Welch opinion came down, is one of the blockbuster cases of this Term. People came from around the country to try and get into the courtroom for the argument and to protest outside the Court as well.
Protesters at the U.S. Supreme Court after arguments in United States v. Texas.
Did you worry about getting in, even as a member of the Supreme Court bar? In some cases, even SCOTUS bar members have had to watch proceedings in overflow rooms on monitors.
AHA: The line for the general public was extremely long, and when I arrived around 7 a.m., there were already 50 or so people in the Supreme Court bar line. That was early enough for me to get into the courtroom itself, and a few people after me got in as well. But note that there were no bar admissions scheduled today — which I suspect the Court did intentionally on account of the Texas argument.
The line to enter the courtroom at One First Street for oral argument in United States v. Texas.
DL: What happens next for your client? Mr. Welch could still get the same sentence in the end, right?
AHA: We asked the Court to resolve the Johnson retroactivity issue, so the maximum relief we could get for our client was a remand to the Eleventh Circuit, which is exactly what we got. We still have remaining issues to litigate in front of the court of appeals — where we are adverse to the government, which takes the position that Mr. Welch’s sentence should stay the same. [As previously discussed, the government sided with the petitioner before the Supreme Court on the issue of Johnson‘s retroactivity.]
DL: Will you handle case on remand?
AHA: Yes, we plan to continue to represent Mr. Welch on remand.
DL: And what happens next for you? Any vacation plans?
AHA: I have an argument next week in the Seventh Circuit. I’ll be starting moots for that in the next few days.
DL: A litigator’s work is never done. Good luck on that argument, and congrats again on prevailing in your first argument before the Supreme Court!
The victorious Jenner & Block team that worked on Welch. Left to right:
Joshua Parker, Amir Ali, Lindsay Harrison, Adrienne Benson, and Trent McCotter.
Argument analysis: A likely decision in favor of retroactivity? [SCOTUSblog]
Welch v. United States: Oral Argument Transcript [Supreme Court of the United States]
Welch v. United States: Opinion [Supreme Court of the United States]
Earlier: A Biglaw Associate’s Supreme Court Debut
Update: Jenner & Block Associate Scores SCOTUS Win
Jenner & Block Associate Argues Her First Case – In The Supreme Court
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.
