Posted by Orin Kerr:
Ouch!
On Tuesday, [1]a panel of the Third Circuit reversed and remanded an
order of a district court judge who had simply copied verbatim the
appellee's proposed opinion in the case. Here is an excerpt from the
Third Circuit's opinion:
Judicial opinions are the core workproduct of judges. They are
much more than findings of fact and conclusions of law; they
constitute the logical and analytical explanations of why a judge
arrived at a specific decision. They are tangible proof to the
litigants that the judge actively wrestled with their claims and
arguments and made a scholarly decision based on his or her own
reason and logic. When a court adopts a party's proposed opinion as
its own, the court vitiates the vital purposes served by judicial
opinions. We, therefore, cannot condone the practice used by the
District Court in this case.
Good stuff. To make matters more interesting, the Third Circuit's
published opinion includes both the proposed district court opinion
and the district court's order as an appendix so you can compare the
two yourself. (According to the Third Circuit, the appellant raised
the verbatim copying argument as a ground for reversal only in a
footnote.)
References
1. http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/034320p.pdf
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