Court of Petty Appeals: United States v. Nicole Demitry
United States
v.
Nicole Demitry
78 U.Va 18 (2026)
Berklich, J., delivers the opinion of the Court, in which Vanger, Moore. Koeppel, Boatright, and Lawson J.J. join. Demitry, C.J. emeritus, is recused.
Wu, C.J. concurs in part and dissents in part.
Berklich, J., delivers the opinion of the Court.
Facts
In the dead of night on Saturday, February 21, 2026, the United States of America launched a military strike in Charlottesville, Virginia, and captured incumbent Law Weekly Editor-In-Chief Nicole Demitry and her boyfriend’s dog, Hamish. The US operation, codenamed Operation Free Press, began at 2 a.m. Eastern time. US Armed forces, based in the Judge Advocate General school, bombed infrastructure in Charlottesville, shut down the Albemarle County power grid, and took over the local radio network to suppress defenses as an apprehension force attacked Demitry’s compound on Cream Street. Demitry and Hamish were taken prisoner and detained on the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Newport News (which the military had temporarily placed on the bed of several eighteen-wheelers and driven the hundreds of miles inland) before being flown out of CHO to New York City to face trial there.
Demitry and Hamish were indicted on charges of narcoterrorism and seditious libel. Defendants were convicted of both offenses in a bench trial by a recently deceased Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who presided over the courtroom while being puppeteered Weekend at Bernie’s-style by his clerks. She was sentenced to take the bar exam on Wednesday.
Now, disgraced Law Weekly head Demitry appeals her and Hamish’s conviction to whom but her replacements, the judges on the Court of Petty Appeals. Demitry maintains that the attack on Charlottesville and her arrest and “kidnapping” were an unlawful action taken by President Donald Trump, in violation of domestic law, the U.N. Charter, and the sovereignty of Charlottesville. Demitry also questions the Court of Petty Appeals’ suitability to hear the case before them, arguing that the judges of the court, in place only because of Trump’s actions to topple her reign, are hopelessly conflicted.
Discussion
COPA Conflict of Interests
The Court must, before it reaches Demitry’s claims on executive power, address Demitry’s questioning of COPA authority. Despite appealing her case to the Court of Petty Appeals, the highest court in the land (it’s a small land), she alleges that the judges on the Court are too conflicted to issue a fair and unbiased verdict for her. Demitry argues that COPA members, notably C0-Chief-Justices Kelly Wu and Bradley Berklich, have their jobs only because of her unlawful kidnapping. However, in their [our] official positions as Co-Editors-in-Chief of the Law Weekly, the Chief Justices maintain that the true Editor-in-Chief is still Demitry, and that should she ever return to the golden Herman Miller Aeron chair, they will cede it to her gracefully. Thus, we find that Demitry’s argument cuts the opposite way. If anything, the judges are biased towards her out of a sick and twisted Stockholmian loyalty. Please, pay no attention to the absolutely yoked American marine pressing an M9 into the small of my back whilst his buddy siphons the gas out of my 2006 Toyota Camry.
Demitry protests that, as a matter of good form, a lord should not decide her own trial. To this we agree, which is why we have taken the liberty of recusing her from the case at hand. However, the same need not apply to us. This is not our case, and the desperate pleas of Nemo Iudex do nothing for us. Simply just because we stand to benefit enormously or suffer horribly from the ruling, and we are simultaneously the judges, does not mean that we are conflicted. Our statements of true loyalty to Nicky are all the evidence that we need to show that we won’t throw her under the bus here, without, of course, proper deliberation.
In a pathetic attempt to bolster her failing case, appellant accuses us of bribing Donald Trump with our 2024-2025 American Bar Association National Achievement Award for Best Law School Newspaper in exchange for the privilege of replacing Demitry. This is sad, wrong, and fake news. Donald Trump was merely more deserving of the 2024-2025 Best Law School Newspaper award. His contributions to the student legal journalism landscape have been so impressive and widely-known that there is no need to repeat them here in any detail, or even hint at what they might be. It is, the Court maintains, merely an unfortunate coincidence that our gift was temporally correlated to being handed the reins of the Law Weekly.
Because of the reasons above, we maintain no conflict of interest and proceed to resolve the case of the emeritus on the merits.
Abuse of Executive Power
“The President should be a King, and also should be king of other places, and should be able to take their leaders and put them on trial in our country, because we are their king too,” famously said George Washington. My Ghost Cannot Tell a Lie, Seances with America’s Founding Father, Dick Thornburg (1989). Among many other pieces of evidence, this is what the government presents to bolster its case.
There is longstanding precedent of the Editor-in-Chief being subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Petty Appeals. See Editors v. Allard, 76 U.Va 21 (2024); Gay Section H Law Weekly Staff v. Lake, 75 U.Va 16 (2023) (reaffirming COPA jurisdiction against editorial board members). COPA precedent also constantly affirms the routine ousting of Law Weekly editors-in-chief. See Ex Parte Law Weekly, 76 U.Va 16 (2024); confusingly Ex Parte Law Weekly, 76 U.Va 17 (2025). “As the great Chairman once said, ‘Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history” 76 U.Va 16 (2024). This ignoble fruit rests on the leafy decorative lettuce laurels of some yet untapped but latent executive and legislative authority of the Law Weekly editors in chief, and editorial board, respectively, in addition to the well-established judicial powers of the COPA.
We cannot fairly decide if the government was allowed to kidnap Demitry and spirit her away from her home, and then order her to take the bar exam in February (a truly terrible fate). But we can conduct a little bit of legislative sleight of hand to take that power for ourselves and delegate it thusly to the government.
Previous Courts have held that unfair elections, commitment to “an outdated ideological framework,” are grounds for criminal prosecution. Repeatedly, Demitry has stated that she will contest the “elections” if they result in any other outcome than her continued tenure, and advocated unendingly for “Dresden files superiority” and post-woke Blade Runner analysis. What this means, I have no idea. To this list, we add narcotics trafficking, affirming the ruling of the lower court. Demitry is nothing if not guilty of “having a wittle cigawette. A wittle chocolate cigawette” and then pushing those coffin nails off onto helpless unsuspecting executive editors. Though the government initially proffered this claim, we now take steps to give its ruling full faith and credit, though perhaps on different grounds than first alleged.
We neglect to go through any of the typical tiresome conflicts, practices of ren-voy, or looking at “whole” law vs “2%” law. We leave these to the legal GeekSquad to assemble into restatement compendiums, which we will then ignore. The upshot is that Demitry is indeed still sentenced to take the February Bar, and is recused from COPA C.J. and editor-in-chief duties permanently.
Where are you, pwincess? Hopefully butt-in-seat, studying.
AFFIRMED.
Wu, CJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the Court’s judgment insofar as it affirms that we are entirely, impeccably, almost suspiciously free of conflicts of interest. The fact that we now preside over the very institution from which Ms. Demitry was spectacularly extracted does not trouble me; if anything, it proves our restraint and fortitude in trekking through troubled times. Nor do I quarrel with the proposition that the Executive may, in moments of grave national concern, do dramatic things at inconvenient hours. If February Bar is deemed a constitutionally permissible sanction, I will not be the one to say otherwise. Some fates are worse than detention on a submarine strapped to a convoy and an exam taken in a suit.
But I part ways with the majority at the precise moment it shrugs at the inclusion of Hamish. There is no evidence in this record of seditious tail activity, narcotics distribution via chew toy, or even reckless endangerment of a throw pillow. We may stretch doctrine. We may improvise jurisdiction. We may even tolerate theatricality and tomfoolery. What we may not do is criminalize Good Boy-ness. Accordingly, I would affirm as to Demitry (may her flashcards multiply) but vacate and remand as to Hamish, for immediate release into a world where the only bars he faces are the kind at a dog park fence.