Judge Leif Clark

When a case is heard at the Supreme Court, the docket is filled with briefs of amicus curiae trying to say something that will catch the court's attention.   With so many briefs filed, they sometimes cancel each other out in a flutter of pdf files sounding variations on the same themes.   However, amicus briefs are much less common at the Court of Appeals level.  Recently I was part of an effort where a panel of the Fifth Circuit reversed itself in one instance and reversed a district court in another.   The cases are Hawk

The Fifth Circuit's recent decision in Camp v. Ingalls allowed an itinerant debtor to claim federal exemptions that would not have been available to him had he remained in Florida. That was a small victory for the debtor. However, a decision released just a few days later reveals the darker side of the 730 day rule for claiming exemptions. In the case of In re Fernandez, No. 09-32896 (Bankr. W.D. Tex.