Thursday, November 13, 2008

Unpublished Opinions

But the justice was not impressed; he was instead, appalled. He noticed that a good number of the decisions I pulled up with my searching were unpublished...
We ran into that here, and a number of you weighed in with comments.

I'm just an ignorant non-lawyer, but it seems to me this is yet another way to deprive us of our rights. Face it--the courts don't rule us by the Constitution, hell, they don't even let you mention it--they rely on stare decisis, whether the earlier decisions were transparently tyrannical BS or not. So then they reach an opinion but don't want others to know about it for their defense? Is that what's going on?

Somehow, I don't think things should be this convoluted. But what do I know?

Apparently not that much, because I actually viewed the Kwan development as news that should interest the gun community. I scanned the Internet before I posted, looking to see if anyone else had weighed in on it so I could learn more, and there was nothing. So I sent my link to several prominent legal bloggers as well as conservative news sites and...well, you tell me...

It's not like the feds didn't do their utmost to put this guy down. I guess their being set back in court just doesn't merit notice...*

[Via lawhobbit]

* One notable exception

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if I'd quite go so far as "deprive us of our rights," in no small part because they have so many other ways to do that.

What it does, point out is just how "busy" the federal courts have become, such that the judges are having to "write" opinions - or, as in this case, read opinions written by unelected/unappointed employees - on so many topics and cases. Perhaps if they simply started striking down any laws and regulations that do not pertain to the Article I, Section 8, duties of Congress (it'd be a real short opinion - they could have it made as a rubber stamp, in fact, and churn out hundreds or even thousands a day) they'd have a lot more time to write longer opinions (themselves) on the few areas that still needed judicial discussion.

Personally I don't care if the opinion came from the judge or from some clerk and the judge approved it. It's an important part of stare decisis that court decisions become part of the common law and thus available as dispositive or persuasive evidence to other state and federal courts.

Anonymous said...

stare decisis is a poor substitute for reason and adherence to the law and the constitution.

Stare decisis is nothing more than an excuse to not do the work, or to avoid doing work that may be unpopular but legally and morally necessary.

A bad decision is a bad decision and doesn't become a good decision just because someone somewhere else said it first. A good decision is not at all hard to justify with reason and law and constitutional guidance, it is only the bad or erroneous decisions that must rely on stare decisis to continue the wrong.

Basically stare decisis is cover for the morally cowardly or purposely evi.