I'm from Missouri

This site is named for the famous statement of US Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver from Missouri : "I`m from Missouri -- you'll have to show me." This site is dedicated to skepticism of official dogma in all subjects. Just-so stories are not accepted here. This is a site where controversial subjects such as evolution theory and the Holocaust may be freely debated.

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Location: Los Angeles, California, United States

My biggest motivation for creating my own blogs was to avoid the arbitrary censorship practiced by other blogs and various other Internet forums. Censorship will be avoided in my blogs -- there will be no deletion of comments, no closing of comment threads, no holding up of comments for moderation, and no commenter registration hassles. Comments containing nothing but insults and/or ad hominem attacks are discouraged. My non-response to a particular comment should not be interpreted as agreement, approval, or inability to answer.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Why my legal analyses are correct

The trolls here often quibble about my legal analyses. However, judges are fairly safe in making virtually any defensible legal analysis because the Supreme Court is not likely to review such an analysis, for the following reasons:

(1) Time constraints prevent the SC from accepting more than a tiny fraction of cases submitted to it for review.

(2) Some legal analyses based on SC precedents can be overturned only by overturning the precedent, and the SC would often be reluctant to do that.

(3) An SC ruling on a borderline legal analysis that is based on SC precedent might force the court to greatly complicate precedent and even create confused precedent, and the SC would often be reluctant to do those things.

The above arguments also apply to state supreme courts. I think that the above arguments would be good arguments to make in virtually any brief.

Here are examples of some of my legal arguments that trolls here have quibbled about:
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(1) In lawsuits where there is voluntary cessation by the government, the Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598 (2001) decision says that the courts can dismiss the cases as moot and deny the plaintiffs an attorney fee award.

(2) In my smog impact fee lawsuits, California lost its federal-court tax-suit immunity by "leaving the sphere that is exclusively its own" (Parden v. Terminal Railway) by basing the fee entirely on the state's special status under federal auto emissions laws and regulations.

Also, a big problem with jackass judges is that they don't know how to cut the malarkey and get to the point so that they can make quick and fair decisions so that they can go on to the next cases.
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6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

And I thought Larry was just going to say "because I said so." I guess he did, in not so many words.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

?

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 5:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So essentially you claim your legal analyses are correct because cases aren't likely to get to the Supreme Court, and when they do the Supreme Court is unlikely to overturn precedent?

Well pardon me for intruding on your self-admiration, but isn't there a slight failure of reasoning there? The best that can be said for your "analysis" is that just because a judge makes a decision it doesn't mean that it is right. That is NOT the same as saying that YOUR analysis is correct.

Personally, if I was a betting man I'd put my money on the judges (as opposed to you) on any occasion. And if Judge Jones was the judge then I'd bet the homestead.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:17:00 AM  
Blogger Larry Fafarman said...

Anonymous said (Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:17:00 AM) --
>>>>> The best that can be said for your "analysis" is that just because a judge makes a decision it doesn't mean that it is right. <<<<<<

What is "right"? "What is truth?" (Pontius Pilate) I am saying that any defensible decision can be considered "right" -- deciding which defensible decisions are "right" is arbitrary. My point is that when a decision is defensible, an argument that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn it is weak unless the decision conflicts with the decisions of other circuit appeals courts or state supreme courts or concerns an important question that the SC wants to decide. In fact, there are probably plenty of indefensible decisions that go unreviewed by the Supreme Court simply because the SC does not have the time to review them. Here is Rule 10 of the Supreme Court Rules (note last statement in bold):

Rule 10. Considerations Governing Review on Writ of Certiorari
Review on a writ of certiorari is not a matter of right, but of judicial discretion. A petition for a writ of certiorari will be granted only for compelling reasons. The following, although neither controlling nor fully measuring the Court's discretion, indicate the character of the reasons the Court considers:

(a) a United States court of appeals has entered a decision in conflict with the decision of another United States court of appeals on the same important matter; has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with a decision by a state court of last resort; or has so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court's supervisory power;

(b) a state court of last resort has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with the decision of another state court of last resort or of a United States court of appeals;

(c) a state court or a United States court of appeals has decided an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court, or has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with relevant decisions of this Court.

A petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely granted when the asserted error consists of erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law.
(emphasis added)

However, there does appear to be something of a conflict between the last bolded statement and the preceding two bolded statements. I think that what the court is saying is that the reasons stated in the first two bolded statements can be grounds for granting certiorari, whereas the last bolded statement says that granting certiorari for these reasons is rare.

So I am saying that a lower court could safely make the decisions I described above (regarding the smog impact fee and declaring a case moot when there is voluntary cessation by the government) with little fear that the decisions would be overturned by the Supreme Court. Judges, because of an unfounded fear of being overturned by the Supreme Court, are often reluctant to make defensible exceptions to general rules (e.g., the states' general federal-court immunity to tax suits, as in my federal suit against the smog impact fee).

>>>>>> And if Judge Jones was the judge then I'd bet the homestead. <<<<<<

Judge Jones is a pseudo-intellectual anti-intellectual jackass. He claims to be a big stickler for judicial precedent, but in his Dickinson College commencement speech he ignored precedent and substituted his own biased cockamamie plagiarized quote-mined notion about the establishment clause -- that the Founders based the clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 12:21:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So Jones manages to be both pseudo-intellectual and anti-intellectual at the same time? Weird. Unless that is just your bizarre opinion, which of course counts for nothing IMOHO.

I presume this all means that you are anti-Bush, considering he was the one who appointed this so-called pseudo/anti-intellectual?

Monday, July 28, 2008 4:59:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Do you have anything intelligent to say about the Dover decision?"

"I approve."

Monday, July 28, 2008 2:13:00 PM  

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