Richard Lazarus Formally Notified the Supreme Court of Scalia’s Error

Letter Led to Change in Dissenting Opinion

Who knew that the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal process for notifying it about errors in Court opinions? Richard Lazarus, the Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard and Supreme Court expert extraordinaire, that’s who.  Turns out that after he discovered Justice Scalia’s error about Whitman v. American Trucking (see my earlier post of this morning), Lazarus invoked the Court’s formal rules and procedures and wrote it a letter pointing out the mistake.  Not only did a new version of the Scalia dissent magically appear this morning on the Court’s website, but as Richard noted in an email he sent to an environmental law professors’ list serve of which I am a member, so too did a new heading.  Yesterday’s opinion contained a heading that read, “Plus Ça Change: EPA’s Continuing Quest for Cost-Benefit Authority.”   Today’s opinion replaced that heading with  “Our Precedent.” A bit less snappy but at least it’s accurate.

Nice job, Richard!

EPA v. EME Homer, Richard Lazarus, Scalia error, U.S. Supreme Court