Thursday, September 30, 2010

Valdevia v. Schwarzenegger (9th Cir. - Sept. 28, 2010)

Judge Bea writes a darn good certiorari petition here.  In his dissent (joined by Judges O'Scannlain, Tallman, Callahan, Ikuta and Randy Smith) from the denial of a petition for rehearing en banc.

There are some cases in which the original opinion stands for itself, and fully responds to a later dissent from denial of rehearing en banc.  The are others that would substantially benefit from someone responding to the subsequent dissent.  At least if you want the opinion to survive.

This, in my opinion, is one of the latter situations.

Notwithstanding the relatively small number of judges who join Judge Bea's dissent, I think there's a decent chance that the Supreme Court takes this one up.