The 25-year-olds shaping the Supreme Court docket
The federal government took control of Florida resident Tony Henderson's personal gun collection more than eight years ago. On Tuesday, thanks to a group of law students, the Supreme Court will finally consider whether Henderson deserves some compensation for that property.
Henderson was a U.S. border patrol agent who in 2006 was busted for dealing small amounts of marijuana. He was sentenced to six months in jail and served his time. That, however, isn't where the punishment ended. The former officer had turned his personal gun collection over to the court during his legal proceedings, and the government kept his weapons after his conviction because felons are barred from possessing firearms.
Since the firearms -- some of them family heirlooms -- had no connection to his crime, Henderson asked the government to transfer them to a third party who could then pay him for them. His request was denied. Henderson challenged the decision in court, but representing himself, he only made it so far.
Then, a group of students from the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Law found his case and offered to take it up for him.
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"This is an issue, frankly, I was surprised that it hadn't been addressed before the Supreme Court," third-year law student Anna McDanal told CBS News. For one thing, multiple circuit courts have issued conflicting rulings on the matter-- a key signal the Supreme Court should weigh in.
Perhaps more importantly, the outcome could impact millions of people.
"So many crimes fall under this federal statute that prohibits possession" of firearms, McDanal said. "If it's a felony punishable by at least a year, you can't possess a firearm -- that covers a lot of ground in criminal law. The fact that the government has been essentially seizing this property and then not paying them... seems like something someone would've grasped onto earlier."
McDanal and her fellow UVA students came across Henderson's case in UVA Law School's Supreme Court clinic. The clinic, launched in 2006, gives third-year students the opportunity to handle cases seeking Supreme Court review. The students draft petitions asking the court to review their cases, draft briefs and help prepare actual arguments delivered before the court.
"They're doing things as third-years... that often people don't get to do in practice until they're many years out, maybe not until they're a partner or something in a law firm," UVA Law Professor Dan Ortiz told CBS.
"They're going up against some of the best lawyers in the country... and we beat them as often as not."
Even getting their cases to the court is impressive. Each year Americans ask the Supreme Court to hear about 7,000 cases, but it only accepts about 70. Since 2006, the UVA clinic has taken 12 cases to the court, including two this term. Of the 10 cases with results, the clinic has won six, lost three and saw mixed results in one case.
To find cases the Supreme Court will accept, the clinic's students pore through every case decided by the federal courts of appeal, keeping an eye out for conflicts among the courts. If a case with potential is available, the university clinic offers to represent the petitioner pro bono. That's how one student, Gillian Giannetti, initially identified Henderson's case.
In the subsequent term, different group of students, including McDanal, helped prepare additional briefs for Henderson. They also helped Ortiz prepare the oral arguments he'll deliver before the court on Tuesday.
Henderson's case touches on constitutional issues, such as whether the government can deprive a person of his property without due process, as well as statutory issues such as the meaning of "possession."
"What the government's view allows it to do is accomplish a forfeiture of these assets unconnected to the crime, and that's just arbitrarily increasing the punishment for the crime," Ortiz said. Henderson, he said, "pleaded guilty, he served his time in prison and now the government wants to stick him with this extra economic burden by not allowing him to... capture the economic value of his gun collection."
While most of the third-year law students are in their 20's, Ortiz said they're "old enough to have mature judgment in most cases -- but young enough at the same time to be close to real issues on the ground."
Their relative youth was an asset when researching their last case that went to the Supreme Court, which concerned a rapper posting threatening messages on Facebook.
"It was really helpful to have people who were younger than me working on the papers," Ortiz said. "They could describe Facebook to a group of mostly 70- and 80-year-olds who presumably wouldn't know too much about it unless it were explained well to them."
While the students bring a younger perspective to the law, their pro bono services are also influencing the Supreme Court's docket, Ortiz argues. Indeed, petitioners representing themselves, like Henderson was, rarely make it to the Supreme Court.
Without the dozen or so Supreme Court law school clinics across the country, "there would be, I think, an even larger emphasis on business cases than there are now," Ortiz said.
