Two students from The University of Tulsa’s College of Law spent the past semester working behind the scenes of the federal appellate process, helping shape how judges, attorneys and the legal community understand the most significant decisions issued by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Along with nine other law Tenth Circuit Year-in-Review fellows selected from Oklahoma law schools, Lori Whitlock and Rachel Burrell summarized and explained the published opinions issued by the court during the most recent year. Their work was distributed to hundreds of attorneys throughout the 10th Circuit and provided the foundation for presentations delivered by leading practitioners, academics and jurists at Year-in-Review events in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
The fellowship began with intensive training led by fellowship supervisors UTulsa Law Professor Stephen Galoob and Rob Ramana, a senior legal adviser to U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Bacharach. As part of the training, the fellows learned from Bacharach as well as assistant U.S. attorneys, federal defense attorneys, civil rights lawyers, Magistrate Judges Suzanne Mitchell and Christopher Stephens of the Western District of Oklahoma and U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Federico. Following the training, the fellows were tasked with analyzing and summarizing the published opinions of the 10th Circuit from the previous year.
For Whitlock, the experience aligned closely with her interest in appellate advocacy and criminal law. “You rarely get such candid insight into what judges find persuasive, what frustrates them and how cases look from the other side of the bench,” she said. “The judges and practitioners were deeply invested in teaching, and they took our work seriously.”
Two cases stood out to Whitlock. In one, the 10th Circuit vacated a conviction after determining the defendant committed the charged conduct while asleep, a nuanced doctrinal issue that illustrated how abstract criminal law principles operate in real cases. Another opinion, which later became the subject of the Hulu docuseries “Trophy Wife,” concerned jurisdiction over a husband who murdered his wife on a hunting trip in Africa. “It read almost like a true-crime novel,” Whitlock said.
Burrell said the fellowship sharpened her understanding of how appellate decisions are formed. “We were able to observe 10th Circuit oral arguments in person, review the materials ahead of time and then debrief afterward,” she said. “Watching judges test arguments in real time was invaluable. Knowing our summaries were used as the basis for the Year-in-Review presentations made the experience especially meaningful,” she said.
“Lori and Rachel were ideal participants in our program, which is a unique offering in U.S. law schools,” said Galoob, who co-founded the program and supervised the students’ work. “As we expand the fellowship to additional law schools across the 10th Circuit, we hope that other law students will contribute as much to and benefit as much from the fellowship as they have.”