August 31, 2004, Washington, D.C. ,i>LAWFUEL – Best for law, law news, legal news, legal research – Charles G. Cole, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, assumed leadership of the 600-member Council of Appellate Lawyers (CAL), effective August 15. He was elected Chair at CAL’s annual meeting in June.
Cole replaced Mary Vasaly at the helm of CAL, a part of the American Bar Association Judicial Division’s Appellate Judges Conference and the first national appellate bench-bar organization in the nation.
During Cole’s tenure he plans to continue the growth of CAL and to bring to fruition several written projects on methods of improving appellate advocacy. He will lead CAL during its annual educational program in Dallas in November.
“We hope to attract appellate lawyers from all over the country to this educational opportunity,” says Cole. “This is the first event planned by CAL in conjunction with the newly formed Appellate Judges Education Institute.”
Cole intends to work on the planning of other events that will attract both appellate lawyers and judges.
Cole is the head of Supreme Court and Appellate Practice at Steptoe & Johnson LLP. A former clerk on both the DC Circuit and the US Supreme Court, he has extensive experience with the appellate process.
In the US Supreme Court’s 2001 term, Cole served as counsel to Edison Electric Institute in New York v. FERC, where he successfully defended the preemptive scope of a federal regulation. In the prior USSC term, Cole argued Atkinson Trading Company v. Shirley and won a 9-0 decision. Other Supreme Court cases in which Cole has participated have involved federal preemption, constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law and railroad regulation. He has handled appeals in virtually all of the federal circuits, as well as in state appellate courts. He was awarded the Burton Prize for Excellence in Legal Writing in 2000 and published an article in the Journal of Appellate Practice and Procedure in 2003 about the preemptive effect of federal regulations.
