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(a)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(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
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_ami…
[3]
https://www.eff.org/cases/twitter-v-holder
--
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
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*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>.*