Ninth Circuit Blog has a pretty good write-up on last Wednesday’s Ninth Circuit en banc decision in United States v. Castillo, case no. 05-30401 (July 25, 2007), in which the court vacates the panel opinion and holds that it has jurisdiction to hear a criminal defendant’s appeal based on a pre-plea motion where the defendant waived appeal of pre-plea issues as part of his guilty plea. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure cannot expand or contract subject matter jurisdiction, and it cannot be waived.
In my observation, the tendency to confuse jurisdiction with procedure is way too common. I recently posted, for example, about confusion between forum selection and jurisdiction in a civil case.
The Ninth Circuit likewise notes the lamentable prevalence of confusion, citing Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 455 (2004):
[c]larity would be facilitated if courts and litigants used the label “jurisdictional” not for claim-processing rules, but only for prescriptions delineating the classes of cases (subject-matter jurisdiction) and the persons (personal jurisdiction) falling within a court’s adjudicatory authority.
Amen.
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UPDATE: (7/31/07): California Appellate Report offers some thoughts on how Judge Callahan’s dissent in this 14-1 decision might affect her chances for a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.