The Ninth Circuit, as everyone knows, gets criticized a lot.  But Does the Ninth Get a Bad Rap?  That’s the title of a post by Robert Loblaw at Decision of the Day, which posits that reversals of some Ninth Circuit decisions aren’t always just about the Ninth Circuit.  He notes that commentators like to jump on the big reversals as evidence that the Ninth is out of whack, but:

there are plenty of cases where the Supreme Court uses an appeal from the Ninth as an opportunity to reverse decisions from other circuits, albeit with much less fanfare.

He describes one recent instance in his post.