Foonote

Best footnote in a legal opinion I've read all week, written by Judge Walton in allowing some celebrity law professors to file a friend of the court brief supporting Scooter Libby's remaining free on bail during his appeal:

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from this luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

The one-paragraph order can be viewed as a .pdf here.

Update: Judge Walton refused to delay Libby's sentence today. He did, however, receive and read the brief from the celebrity law professors and had this to say about it:

"The submission was not something I would expect from a first-year in law school," Walton said. "It was submitted for the sole purpose of throwing their names out there."