As we mentioned at the end of the day yesterday, Acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has fired Alan Morrison, the lawyer who had been preparing to defend the District’s handgun ban before the Supreme Court in March. The timing of this move leads to all manner of questions about how seriously the Fenty administration actually takes this Supreme Court case, and whether the Mayor and the Acting AG are capable of putting important legal proceedings above personal disagreements.
It’s been widely reported at this point that a territorial feud between Attorney General Linda Singer and Nickles, who was then Fenty’s special counsel, led to Singer’s resignation a few weeks ago. Morrison was a Singer appointee, and despite his overwhelmingly unique qualifications to argue this case before the high court (he’s argued some 20 Supreme Court cases before, including a number of landmark cases that involved deciding constitutional issues which nobody in recent history has had an opportunity to argue in a previous case — which is exactly the situation with the District’s gun case), Nickles appears to have fired him for no other reason than his ties to Singer. The District’s brief in the case, which Morrison had a leading role in producing, is due tomorrow — meaning Nickles more or less waited until Morrison put a final polish on the brief and then gave him the boot. By having an aide send him an email. Ouch.
But nevermind that Supreme Court arguments are almost always handled by the architect of the brief — in this case Morrison — and that Morrison had more experience in making these kinds of unique constitutional arguments. Let’s give Fenty and Nickles the benefit of the doubt and say that they didn’t have confidence in Morrison’s ability to do the job. But then, here’s Fenty’s statement:
Peter Nickles’ expertise in litigation is going to greatly benefit residents of the District of Columbia in our handgun case pending before the Supreme Court. It is important that he move quickly to build a team and a strategy to maximize our chances of winning this important case.
What? Nickles is widely regarded to be a highly competent litigator, but he has nowhere close to the amount of experience Morrison has in Supreme Court litigation. Nickles has also said he plans on keeping D.C. Solicitor General Todd Kim, Thomas Goldstein of Akin Gump and Walter Dellinger of O’Melveny & Myers, the three lawyers who had been working with Morrison to prepare the brief, on the case, possibly tapping one of them to make the arguments. So how is keeping the same team you had, minus the one guy who was heading up the entire effort, add up to building a new team?
None of it makes much sense until you factor in Morrison’s statements to the Washington Post indicating that Nickles’ sole interest was to purge Singer’s allies from the AG’s office and the handgun case. No matter how Fenty and Nickles play it, the District’s handgun case in the Supreme Court has now been set back months.
