Law Nerds Out There -- 9th Circuit May Itself be Overturned
 

The Federal Circuit most often overturned by the Supremes may itself be overturned.

This is a Good Thing; and no, not b/c it will eradicate the unbridled judicial activism of the Left Coast, but b/c it will let California be California w/o imposing its lunatic bench-mandated "let the will of the people, as expressed through their elected legislature, be DAMNED!!" notions on Idaho, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

This case comes to us on Writ of Certiorari from the 9th Circuit. Other reasons for reversal include...

-- Apocryphal statement of Justice Antonin Scalia

JP

Agree and if the court system in Cali wants to impose laws on their state, then thats fine.

When it effects the rest of us in the West who are not as liberal as they are, then thats overstepping our boundaries.

JoeA

LOL, there would be a new circuit created to represent Alaska, Washington and Oregon. It would be called "9th Circuit II."

The origin of the circuit court system, for those of you non-law-geeks out there, is to provide a court of appeals to review decisions of the lower federal district courts. It's called a "circuit" court because in the old days, you had one Judge that would make the rounds and hear all the appeals from rulings of the courts in that judicial district. The original Judges had to "ride circuit" or visit all the courtrooms in the judicial district.

Anyway, having multiple jurisdictions under one roof results from this historical legacy. The 9th Circuit is the largest judicial district: it includes includes all federal courts in California, Oregon, Washington,
Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Now, it probably doesn't make sense to reorganize the Circuit court system merely because you don't like the ideological bent of the judges that sit there. That's the trouble that a lot of "conservative" groups run into-- they effectively are engaging in the very conduct they disdain in an effort to shift the ideological balance by restructuring the system, with the assumption that THEIR judicial activist agenda would be more easily implemented. That's just statism of a different stripe IMHO.

But it might make sense to break it into smaller pieces for easier administration and to speed things up a bit.

My personal view WRT the 9th Circuit's decisions has nothing to do with this viewpoint, by the way.

Right on, John.

JCM

I am shocked this thread is not more popular.

It is 4:13 the day before Thanksgiving. All the lawyers are at the club sipping martinis.. Yous guys are late!

John,

One who wishes to disintegrate the 9th circuit wishes to do so not because one disagrees w/ the Court. One wishes to do so because millions disagree and have voted such. To wit, you will, the thumbing of noses by the 9th of properly executed and publicly mandated propositions by the will of the people of the State of California...

Disagreeing with the court does not make their decisions wrong.

mikester -
I agree -- disagreement w/ a court's decision doesn't make it wrong, but there are decisions that simply are wrong. Hence, the 9th Circuit gets b!tch-slapped by the Supremes most often.

Did you disagree with Gore v. Bush? Does that make it wrong?

I think fracturing the 9th Circuit as planned is an excellent exercise in Federalism. Allowing those who wish to live under certain rules to do so, while their jursidictional neighbors can live under the rules they wish to.

It will not stop activist judges from being stomped by the Supremes when they stray too far from the written law. But at least those folks living with and under the consequences of instrumental decision-making will be limited to those most ideologically aligned (on the whole) w/ the court they're under (California).

JP

Which ones exactly? The people of CA have passed some ridiculous propositions. It is for the court (acting on cases brought by people) to decide whether or not the "will of the people" is legal or not.

I think splitting the 9th could be fine, as it covers a large stretch of land and a lot of people.

It seems to me that nearly every time I've read of a Federal court decision that I felt was absolutely bonkers...totally against common sense, reading more of the article revealed that the decision came from the 9th circuit...