A change to Rule 28 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure aims to make appellate briefs shorter and less redundant. Rule 28 currently requires a “statement of the case” and a separate “statement setting out the facts.” These requirements often seemed arbitrary and frequently resulted in briefs that needlessly restated facts—once in the “statement…

Appellate jurisdiction over bankruptcy court orders can be a messy affair. As summarized in this 2008 article from the Michigan Bar Journal, the definition of “finality” for purposes of appellate jurisdiction can be fluid in the bankruptcy context. Some federal courts of appeal have viewed bankruptcy orders as different in kind from district court orders…