Latest Case: Friends of Columbia Gorge v. Energy Fac. Siting Coun. (Government & Administrative Law)

Trump’s Lawyers Will Get Away with Facilitating His Anti-Democratic Antics and They Know It

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College—predicts that because the lawyer discipline process is broken, President Trump’s lawyers will get away with facilitating his anti-democratic misconduct. Professor Sarat notes that Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) released a letter calling on bar authorities to investigate and punish members of Trump’s post-election legal team, but he points out that while LDAD can shame those members, it still lacks the ability itself to discipline or disbar.

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Friends of Columbia Gorge v. Energy Fac. Siting Coun.

Docket: S065478

Opinion Date: December 10, 2020

Judge: Thomas A. Balmer

Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law

The appeal before the Oregon Supreme Court in this case was an attorney fee dispute arising out of an administrative rules challenge. Petitioners successfully challenged rules adopted by the Energy Facility Siting Council that amended the process for reviewing requests for amendment (RFAs) to site certificates. Petitioners sought $299,325.64 in attorney fees under ORS 183.497. The council asked the Supreme Court the court to award no fees. After review, the Supreme Court awarded petitioners $31,633 in attorney fees. "In the end, the most relevant statutory factor here in resolving the parties’ dispute is '[t]he time and labor required in the proceeding, the novelty and difficulty of the questions involved in the proceeding and the skill needed to properly perform the legal services.' . . . it does require attorney time and effort to defeat even meritless arguments, like the council’s argument on this issue. Having carefully reviewed petitioners’ filing, and based on other fee petitions recently filed in this court and our experience with appellate briefing and argument as judges and lawyers, we conclude that it is reasonable to compensate petitioners for 70 hours of work for briefing the claim on judicial review and preparing a fee petition for work on that claim."