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The Supreme Court granted cert this week in Holguin-Hernandez v. United States, No. 18-7739, to decide whether criminal defendants must object after sentencing to preserve for appeal a challenge to the substantive reasonableness (read: length) of their sentence. The courts of appeals have split on this matter. And given the United States’s concession that a post-sentencing objection is not required, Holguin-Hernandez will likely mark the end of the rule requiring them.…

Michael Solimine’s essay Are Interlocutory Qualified Immunity Appeals Lawful? (PDF, 217KB) is now up at Notre Dame Law Review Online. Appeals from the denial of qualified immunity are a frequent topic on this blog (see here, here, and here), and anyone reading this should be interested in Michael’s essay.…

I recently wrote about the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Gant v. Hartman, which illustrated Scott v. Harris’s effect on interlocutory appeals. But that wasn’t Scott’s only impact on civil procedure. It has also affected summary-judgment practice. A recent decision from the First Circuit—Underwood v. Barrett—illustrates both of the procedural changes that Scott wrought.…

The Convention Against Torture (along with its implementing statutes and regulations) prohibits deporting immigrants to countries where they are likely to face torture. Immigrants can accordingly seek to defer their removal when they face a likelihood of torture. If deferral is denied, the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the courts of appeals jurisdiction to review that denial.…

In Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, the Supreme Court held that a defendant seeking arbitration could appeal a district court decision that dismissed an action after ordering classwide arbitration (instead of the individual arbitration the defendant wanted). In doing so, the Court elided an issue that has split the courts of appeals for years: whether a district court must stay an action—not dismiss it—after ordering arbitration.…

The Supreme Court granted cert this morning in Ritzen Group Inc. v. Jackson Masonry, LLC. The case asks whether an order denying relief from a bankruptcy stay is final and appealable.

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Update: My article on this issue—Assumed Facts and Blatant Contradictions in Qualified-Immunity Appeals—is now available to read on SSRN.

Last week, in Gant v. Hartman, the Seventh Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction under Johnson v. Jones to review an interlocutory qualified-immunity appeal when the defendant failed to accept the facts assumed by the district court.…

Last year, I wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision in Microsoft Corp. v. Baker appeared to hold that the district court proceedings in a case never ended:

The plaintiffs in Baker voluntarily dismissed all of their claims with prejudice, and the district court had nothing else to do. But according to the [Supreme] Court, the voluntary dismissal in Baker was not a “final decision” and thus could not be appealed.

The Third Circuit tackled a slew of appellate-jurisdiction issues in the latest appeal arising out of the NFL concussion litigation. In In re National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation, the court partially reversed a district court order that voided all agreements between players and third-party litigation funders. But to get there, the court had to untangle something of a jurisdictional mess.…

A recent decision out of the Tenth Circuit—Estate of Ceballos v. Husk—illustrates the one of the several persistent problems with interlocutory qualified-immunity appeals. In Ceballos, the Tenth Circuit rightly refused to extend pendent appellate jurisdiction over a city’s appeal from the denial of its motion to dismiss a civil right claims for municipal liability (more commonly known as a “Monell claim).…