[Advocacy Advisors] Twitter v. Holder amicus brief

Wed Feb 18 17:42:31 UTC 2015

Hi Dimi,

In the US, amicus briefs can have legal value as well as media value. Amici
are not parties to the case, so it may not have the same weight as the
parties' briefs, but it's an opportunity to add another perspective. Some
advocacy organizations (like ACLU and EFF), as well as the US government,
regularly file amicus briefs on potentially relevant topics.

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 6:40 AM, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <
dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
>
> Thanks for doing this! I do think we have an interest in this case and
> questions about such letters have been raised even within our community.
>
> The way I understand it, an amicus brief  is like a highly official letter
> of support but has no palpable legal value. Do such documents play any role
> for the court or is this rather targeted at the media?
>
> Thanks!
> Dimi
>
> 2015-02-18 6:56 GMT+01:00 Stephen LaPorte <slaporte at wikimedia.org>:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> We have joined six other organizations[1] in an amicus brief[2] in
>> Twitter v. Holder.[3] Twitter initiated this action against the US
>> government to establish the right to publish more detailed info about the
>> number of national security letters it receives in its transparency report.
>>
>> [1] Aautomattic, Cloudflare, CREDOMobile, Medium, Sonic, and Wickr.
>> [2]
>> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/5/54/Twitter_v_Holder_amicus.pdf
>> [3] https://www.eff.org/cases/twitter-v-holder
>>
>> --
>> Stephen LaPorte
>> Legal Counsel
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
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>> members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
>> on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
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>
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-- 
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation

*NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal and ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.*
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