Maryland Appellate Law Blog

Appellate review rests on a reassuring premise: when a trial court gets something wrong, a higher court can correct it. Lawyers examine transcripts, scrutinize evidence, identify legal errors, prepare briefs, and ask appellate judges to determine whether the law was properly applied. The process is expensive, time-consuming, and intellectually demanding, but it offers the possibility that an erroneous judgment will …
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Courts like to talk about access to justice. There are commissions devoted to it. Committees study it. Conferences discuss it. Reports celebrate it. Judges speak earnestly about ensuring that ordinary citizens have meaningful access to the courts regardless of their economic circumstances. Then an ordinary citizen loses a case, wants to prevent the consequences while an appellate court determines whether …
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We tell ourselves a comforting story about judges. We imagine that once the robe goes on, the human being somehow comes off. The architecture of every courtroom reinforces the illusion: elevated benches, black robes, formal titles, ritualized language, and the command to rise when the judge enters. Every detail quietly suggests that ordinary human judgment has been replaced by something …
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People like to imagine that authority and legitimacy are connected to correctness. We want to believe that the person with the power to decide is also the person who is right. That laws command obedience because they are just. That court decisions carry force because judges have carefully examined the facts, correctly applied the law, and reached the proper result. …
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It is 2026. We carry computers in our pockets. We transmit documents across the planet in seconds. Lawyers can search thousands of judicial opinions without leaving their desks. Artificial intelligence can analyze information, summarize documents, and assist with complex research faster than most humans could have imagined a generation ago. And yet, somehow, grown adults still believe the optimal way …
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Maryland’s debt collection statutes contain a trap that many debt buyers either overlooked or hoped courts would overlook for them. The problem is deceptively simple. If a company purchases consumer debt that was already in default when acquired, and then attempts to collect that debt in Maryland, the company generally must be licensed as a collection agency under the Maryland …
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Every litigator eventually encounters one. The hostile judge. The impatient judge. The judge who interrupts before you finish a sentence, rolls his eyes at your argument, lectures counsel from the bench, or speaks with such exaggerated certainty that anyone unfamiliar with the law would assume wisdom must be radiating from the robe itself. Young lawyers often make the same mistake …
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Most people enter the legal system believing courts exist primarily to determine what happened and reach the right result. That is not entirely wrong. But it is incomplete in a way that shocks many litigants the first time they encounter it. Because much of modern litigation is not actually about truth. It is about procedure. Deadlines. Jurisdiction. Preservation. Finality. Waiver. …
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People often assume that if something is legal, it must be fair—and if something is illegal, it must be wrong. That assumption feels intuitive. It’s how most of us were raised to think about rules, authority, and consequences. It’s also not how the legal system actually works. The Intuition Trap From a young age, we are taught that rules exist …
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If you’ve never been involved in a court case before, one of the first assumptions is this: you’re going to have to take time off work, sit in a courtroom for hours, and wait for your case to be called. That used to be true. It’s no longer always the case. Many Hearings Are Now Remote Courts increasingly allow certain …
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