The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and many state counterparts impose “word limits” on briefs and similar documents. Rule 32(a)(7)(B) requires that a principal brief contain no more than 13,000 words, a reply brief, no more than 6,500. Briefs that comply can exceed the respective page limits of 30 and 15. Rule 28.1(e)(2)’s length limits for briefs filed in cross-appeals take the same form. An alternative measure, available only to briefs prepared with a monospaced typeface, is lines of text. While a brief’s table of citations is excluded from those word-count caps, all of the citations in its body, including those contained in footnotes, are tallied. See Rule 32(a)(7)(B)(f). The question explored here is: How are they counted?
The following citations are among those that appear in a brief randomly selected from U.S. Court of Appeals filings of this past June:
Clear Sky Car Wash LLC v. City of Chesapeake, Va., 743
Original URL: https://citeblog.access-to-law.com/?p=1048
