Not much today; by lunchtime, only a single opinion from the Ninth Circuit and nothing new from the California Court of Appeal. So a sleepy Hump Day.
Which gives me the opportunity to go back and write, if only briefly, about a very good opinion I read a couple of weeks ago.
I really, really like this opinion by Justice Elia. It's not only persuasive, but it is manifestly written with a sense of justice and the importance of the subject matter. Shorthand for what it says: Liberty matters. You deserve some sort of a timely hearing to challenge your involuntary commitment to a mental hospital.
I don't uniformly get a palpable sense that an opinion deeply and profoundly "gets" what Due Process means. But I do here.
Bravo.
