On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 1:14 PM omd <c.ome...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 6:11 PM Kerim Aydin <ke...@uw.edu> wrote:
> > Hi omd,
> >
> > When a Motion to Reconsider is filed, I drop the old arguments
> > entirely from the case log, so the old judgement isn't mistaken for
> > precedent (there's no objective way of knowing whether motion-filers
> > are objecting to minor portions, or the whole thing, and keeping both
> > gets quite confusing). Your revised judgement below seems to depend
> > on some of that long original judgement though (references to CFJ 3425
> > eg.) and I'd hate the detailed work to get lost - are there parts that
> > should be kept?
>
> Hmm... I guess you could keep everything in the original before "I'll
> honor the precedent here."
>
> Though I'll venture that, as a player, I think I'd prefer a policy of
> letting the case log serve as a full historical record, rather than
> dropping information even if it's outdated. If you're worried about
> judgements being mistaken for precedent, why not just add a note at
> the top saying that the judgement was reconsidered/overruled/etc.?
Recent habits, especially for self-filed motions, are "I self-motion
to reconsider, and submit the entirely same judgement except for a
couple clarifying paragraphs" (like I did for 3733) or trivial
mistakes ("I wrote this long argument for FALSE that still holds, but
accidentally typed TRUE instead of FALSE at the end, so it's all the
same except s/TRUE/FALSE.") Under those circumstances, its much more
of a chore for later reading to have two long versions of nearly the
same thing, and preserving the trivial mistake adds nothing. Some
judges have even implicitly required in-place editing to make a
record, e.g. "I re-deliver the below judgement (with a long judgement
carat-quoted) except with FALSE replacing TRUE in the final sentence."
For long-term posterity, reading the entire thing quoted in carats is
a pain so I make those edits in the original when the instructions
have a "rule change" level of clarity. And the judges themselves,
often, are indicating (implicitly or explicitly) that the reconsidered
judgements are intended as "replacement" not an "in addition to".
So yeah, for the record I'm allowing myself to "curate" clear edits
like that rather than cutting and pasting verbatim - hopefully not too
controversially?
It's much rarer to have two sets of arguments, especially self-filed,
that build on each other. But if they do I'm happy to include the
full thing so I'll do that here regardless (include the complete thing
- you're right actual substantive editing after the fact isn't good,
so all or nothing - "all" is appropriate here!).
Of course much of the current practice is built around the lack of the
"permanent and curated" historical record for the past couple years -
maybe if I can keep the record up habits will change so each judgement
builds on what was entered in the case log others will expect that and
change judgement style to match - we'll see...
