A followup to my post yesterday on the origins of Linda Greenhouse's much-talked-about story on the gap in legal research in the Supreme Court's Kennedy v. Louisiana decision. I asked the blogger whose post tipped off Greenhouse, Dwight Sullivan, how obscure this information was in his legal world. He responded by e-mail:
Any serious military justice practitioner would know of the legislation because it was a systemic rewrite of military law governing sexual assaults.
Evidently there were no serious military justice practitioners in the house when this important case was briefed, argued, and decided -- or in the Department of Justice, which yesterday admitted blame for not knowing enough to keep the Court informed, as Greenhouse reports today (and prompting a citation-riddled response by the dogged Sullivan).
Finally, I asked about the name of his blog, CAAFlog:
"CAAF" is the abbreviation for the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, so "CAAFlog" is both an homage to SCOTUSblog and a bit of fun word play, since the "F" that ends CAAF also starts the word "Flog." (We military justice practitioners are apparently easily amused.)
My guess is that CAAFlog is now on a number of blogrolls and RSS readers after this week's revelations.
