Federal Appellate Courts

The New York Times has a lengthy article today on how Trump has turned the Federal appellate courts into a bulwark for his policies.

Frankly, I distrust the Federal appellate courts, and have done so for a long time. They often seem to base their opinions on their personal political ideology than the law.

A long time ago, I had some tangential involvment in Federal appellate cases. As I got to know the practitioners in that field, they told me that they could guess the outcome of their cases depending on who the three judges were that were assigned to the panel to hear their cases. I had some free time (and access to a one of the online legal services), so I looked into it.

Damned if they weren't right.

Federal appellate panels have three judges on them. If you were appealing a civil rights violation case in that particular circuit, if you got two or more conservtive judges, you lost. If you got two or more liberal judges, you didn't necessarilly win, but you had a shot at it. It was so bad and so predictable that lawyers whose cases drew three conservative judges would advise their clients that it was fruitless to appear for oral arguments.

It was almost funny, in a tragic-comic sense. If the plaintiff lost at trial, or had a low award, the judges, both liberal and conservative, would respect the decision of the jury. But if the plaintiff won big, the conservative judges would write all sorts of mealy-mouthed words about how the jury was the finder-of-fact, but then come up with rationales for why they were going to shitcan the jury's verdict.

What it did, for me, was color my view of the Federal bench. And I went down a different road.