Ninety percent plagiarism figure suggests that Dover ID-as-science opinion is one-sided

Actually, the Discovery Institute's finding that about 90 percent of the Dover opinion's ID-as-science section was plagiarized from the ACLU suggests that this section is very one-sided. How much of the remaining approx. 10 percent came from the defendants? The ACLU material certainly does not contain any arguments supporting the defendants, not even for the purpose of rebutting those arguments (this material is from the ACLU's "proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law" brief and does not contain any of the defendants' arguments or rebuttals of the defendants' arguments). It seems that Judge Jones should have presented some material from the defendants, if for no other reason than to show why he rejected this material. Some people have this strange idea that the sole purpose of judicial opinions is to present the winning side's arguments and that it is out of order for a judicial opinion to discuss the losing side's arguments.

These final post-trial "proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law" briefs ought to be abolished because they contain nothing but the unrebutted and sometimes unsupported assertions of the parties. Where there is no courtroom trial, I believe that the usual briefing procedure is to have a plaintiff's "opening" brief which is answered by a defendant's "answering" brief which is answered by a plaintiff's "reply" brief (the parties are called appellants and appellees in the appeals courts and petitioners and respondents in the Supreme Court -- the appellants and the petitioners can be either the original plaintiffs or the original defendants). Jones allowed briefs rebutting the "proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law" briefs but the procedure that was used in the Dover case was still quite a bit different from the normal briefing procedure.