Judicial ideology and the decision to publish voting and publication patterns in Ninth Circuit asylum cases

Judicature

Volumn 89, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 212-219

  Law, David S ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645785857     PISSN: 00225800     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. The First, Second, and Seventh Circuits are the only federal courts of appeals that publish a majority of their decisions. Federal Judicial Center, Citations to Unpublished Opinions in the Federal Courts of Appeals, June 1, 2005, at 53 tbl. y, available at http://www.fjc.gov/public/home.nsf/autoframe? openform&url_r=pages/377.
2. The rules of the First, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits discourage the citation of unpublished opinions, while those of the Second, Seventh, Ninth, and Federal Circuits forbid such citation outright, except in case-specific circumstances. Id. at 1.
3. In September 2005, the Judicial Conference approved (over vigorous dissent) the longdebated Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1, which will prohibit the federal courts of appeals from discouraging or restricting citation to unpublished decisions. See Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Rulemaking, http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/index.html (last visited Nov. 15, 2005) (listing pending rule amendments).
4. Before Rule 32.1 can take effect, it must still be approved by the Supreme Court and will then be subject to rejection by Congress. See Ralph Mecham, The Rulemaking Process: A Summary for Bench and Bar, at http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/proceduresum.htm (last modified Sept. 30, 2003) (setting forth the timeline for adoption of new federal judicial rules).
5. Compare Anastasoff v. United States, 223 F.3d 898, 903-05 (8th Cir. 2000) (holding that federal courts lack power under Article III to choose which of their decisions are to have precedential effect), vacated as moot, 235 F.3d 1054, 1055-56 (8th Cir. 2000) (en banc), with Hart v. Massanari, 266F.3d 1155, 1159-80 (9th Cir. 2001) (defending both the constitutionality and practical wisdom of limited publication).
6. Richard Posner, THE FEDERAI. COURTS: CHALLENGE AND REFORM 165 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996);
7. Patricia Wald, The Rhetoric of Results and the Results of Rhetoric: Judicial Writings, 62 U. CHI. L. REV. 1371, 1374 (1995).
8. For contrary views from the bench, see Boyce Martin Jr., In Defense of Unpublished Opinions, 60 OHIO ST. L.J. 177, 190-92 (1999);
9. Philip Nichols, Selective Publication of Opinions: One Judge's View, 35 AM. U. L. REV. 909, 912-13, 919-20, 927 (1986).
10. STH CIR. R. APP. I.
11. D.C. CIR. R. 36(A).
12. Patricia Wald, Changing Course: The Use of Precedent in the District of Columbia Circuit, 34 CLEV. ST. L. REV. 477, 501-02 (1986).
13. Wald, supra n. 5, at 1374.
14. Richard Arnold, Unpublished Opinions: A Comment, 1 J. APP. PRAC. & PROCESS 219, 223 (1999).
15. See, e.g., Pierre Bergeron, En Banc Practice in the Sixth Circuit: An Empirical Study, 1990-2000, 68 TENN. L. REV. 771, 794-96 (2001 )
16. Wald, supra n. 8, at 483-86;
17. Alex Kozinski & Stephen Reinhardt, Please Don't Cite This! Why We Don't Allow Citation to Unpublished Dispositions, CAL. LAW., June 20, 2000, at 44.
18. En banc decisions, of which there were only three, were excluded from the analysis because such decisions are always published.
19. Deborah Jones Merritt & James Brudney, Stalking Secret Law: What Predicts Publication in the United States Courts of Appeal 54 VAND. L. REV. 54, 98-107 (2001)
20. Id. at 99, tbl. VIII, 101-02.
21. Id. at 115.
22. Donald Songer et al., Nonpublication in the Eleventh Circuit: An Empirical Analysis, 16 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 963, 983 (1989).
23. Id.
24. Id.
25. For an introduction to such methods, see Simon Jackman, Estimation and Inference via Bayesian Simulation: An Introduction to Markov Chain Monte Carlo, 44 AM. J. POL. Sci. 375, 377 (2000).
26. The opening chapters of Valen Johnson & James Albert, ORDINAL DATA MODELING (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1999) offer a more technical discussion.
27. For detailed description of the model, see David Law, Strategic Judicial Lawmaking: Ideology, Publication, and Asylum Law in the Ninth Circuit, 73 U. CINN. L. REV. 817, 853-57 (2005).
28. Excluded from the results are judges who participated in fewer than five published cases, or who heard fewer than 30 asylum cases in total.
29. For publication rates by circuit, see Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Court Management Statistics 2004, http://www.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/cmsa2004.pl (last visited Dec. 7, 2005).
30. 9TH CIR. R. 36-2.
31. None of the cases in the data set purported to reverse a published decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals; nor did any case involve a government appeal from a ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals granting relief to an asylum seeker.