One often hears advocates of the conservative orientation trot out the chestnut that the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is something of a laughingstock at the Circuit Court of Appeals Club because of its high reversal rate by the Supremes.
Pardon the arched eyebrow, but as I gradually pickle with age, I’ve found that I’ve become a little suspicious of many of the Articles Of Faith among both ends of the spectrum.
So I turned to Google, and got the predictable blogosphere squealing about the “Ninth Circus” and such. It’s been pretty much useless.
I did, however, come up with a passably useful analysis that raises several seemingly contradictory points, to wit:
That the authors came to that conclusion should be obvious from the URL.
However, they admit
But…
Rather than do both a statistical and qualitative analysis of Appeals Court reversal rates on my own (which I’m much too drunk for at the moment) I ask the barristers and people who should otherwise know better of the SDMB, what’s up? Is the 9th really the cesspool of judicial activism that some claim it to be? Can the reversal rate be explained away by the size of the Circuit? Et cetera?
I’ll leave y’all to hammer it out, and ask clarifying questions when I become befuddled. I probably wouldn’t be any good it this even if I were sober.
Well, the only statistic missing is the number of cases heard by individual courts. If they handle a similar case load then that works against the 9th. If the 9th hears more then its a wash. They get a lot of publicity because of the nature of their cases.
I’m not a big fan of legislative Jurists but I too would like to know what’s what.
Maybeso, Marley, but the decisions handed down by the sometimes kangeroo court of the 9th, are oft times laughingly overturned unanimously by the ultimate and most final, Supreme Court.
Bless their hearts. The point is that they are mucho leftcoasto, and therefore they are mucho leftcoasto out of touch with mainstream Americans like some of you and me.
These silly pretentious guys and gals should go out and get a real job and stop pretending that they are the grand hip oracles of things and thoughts that are yet to come.
Yeah 8 were… but so were 15 other apellate decisions.
If you weren’t so busy being a smug “mainstream american” you might have realized that the entire point related to the proportion of cases, and not the mere fact that a certain number were laughed out by the venerable scotii.
I also wonder if part of it isn’t the nature of the cases that come before the 9th. That is to say, Californians seem to be a more litigious lot than, say, North Carolinians. That’s a totally anecdotal feeling, mind you. But I notice that the West Coast seems more willing to file environmental or social oriented challenges than the East Coast. Combine that with the large area that the 9th covers and it may be why more cases of these types come from them.
Doesn’t the Supreme Court take cases that it’s more likely were wrongly decided? Isn’t that the whole point? So wouldn’t it make sense that cases that come before them often get reversed?
Is there anyplace that lists the statistics for the number of cases that the court takes, and how many it reverses?
Don’t forget that the Supremes most often take cert where there is disagreement between precedents among the various circuits. This will happen most often with the 9th because it is the largest circuit, and theirs will be the remanding jurisdiction in a majority of cases because it is the slowest (being the largest).
This aside from the fact that they are a bunch of nutballs.
