Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Williams v. California (9th Cir. - Aug. 19, 2014)

I sometimes find it refreshing when the Ninth Circuit adopts the district court's opinion as its own.  It's a nice hat-tip to the hardworking district court judge.  Plus, when there's no need to reinvent the wheel, why do so?

So when the Ninth Circuit this morning adopted as its own an opinion by District Judge King, I thought it nice.

Just two minor points, however:

(1)  If you're simply adopting the district court's opinion, why does it take so long?  Oral argument in this case was in October 2013.  If the district court's opinion is sufficiently complete and self-evidently correct to justify adopted in in toto (notwithstanding the appellant's arguments on appeal), I don't know why it takes nearly a year to adopt the thing.

(2)  I know that it's old-fashioned to use actual books these days.  But isn't there something a little lame about attaching the district court's opinion as a Westlaw printout?  Since the thing's formally published (at 990 F.2d Supp. 1009) already, I might have actually run down to the library and made a copy of it.

During a couple of minutes of those nine months or so.