How Amy Weil Got Thomas's Amicus Call
Atlanta attorney
Amy Weil of
The Weil Firm lost her first U.S. Supreme Court argument yesterday when the
unanimous decision in Culbertson v. Berryhill was issued. Hours after getting the news, she had only gratitude for what she called the “awesome experience” of arguing before the justices and a "leap of faith" by Justice
Clarence Thomas.
Thomas had picked Weil as amicus counsel to defend the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit after the U.S. Justice Department, in a change of position, agreed with the petitioner,
Richard Culbertson, an Orlando, Florida, social security disability practitioner.
In naming Weil, Thomas, circuit justice for the Eleventh Circuit,
broke with the high court’s tradition of appointing former Supreme Court clerks when the need arose for someone to defend the lower court judgment.
Weil won the appointment because of her appellate experience and a professional connection to Thomas.
Weil was a former federal prosecutor who spent 25 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, 18 of which she served as chief of the appellate division. She has argued five en banc Eleventh Circuit arguments which, she said, are similar to high court arguments.
Thomas spoke twice at the Eleventh Circuit Appellate Practice Institute, a seminar that she helped to establish. “I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions and always expressed an interest in arguing in the Supreme Court,” Weil said Tuesday. “I have been pretty relentless at times. I give my card everywhere and he probably has a lot of them.”
Still, she added, it was “very generous” of Thomas who could have turned to a regular of the Supreme Court bar. “It’s a lot of work and having experience is helpful,” she said. “But it is also good for them to hear from other people, not just the people they are used to hearing from. I think others might approach arguments in a different way if not part of the Supreme Court bar.”
Arguing the case in November was Weil's “greatest professional experience,” while writing the brief was the hardest. “I did eight moot courts” she said. “I would have done more. You can never prepare enough. The bar, my colleagues, were so generous with their time in helping to moot me. I loved it.”
Weil said she hopes her “outsider” appointment sets a precedent for more such appointments and more appointments of women. And, yes, she would do it again if asked. “Of course,” she said.
>> The Culbertson case may have flown low on the public’s radar but it was important to social security disability lawyers who handle some of the more than 12,000 social security disability appeals reviewed annually by federal courts.
In his opinion, Thomas agreed with Culbertson’s counsel,
Daniel Ortiz of the
University of Virginia School of Law, that federal law did not cap attorney fees at 25 percent of a claimant’s past-due benefits for an attorney’s representation both before the agency and the court but had separate 25 percent fee caps for court and agency representations.
Although rejecting Weil’s contrary arguments, Thomas said she “ably discharged” her assigned duties.
The Culbertson case was the sixth high court argument for Ortiz, who is the director of the law school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and it was the clinic’s 15th high court case since its inception in 2006.
Amy Weil
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