Image from Wikipedia In yesterday’s Daily Journal, Staff Reporter John Roemer has a front-page article about an apparent surge in en banc rehearings granted by the Ninth Circuit since Alex Kozinski became Chief Judge. (Full disclosure: yours truly is quoted in the article.) Are the two phenomena related? Not according to Judge Kozinski, whom the article quotes: “I’ve always been more en banc friendly than many of my colleagues,” he wrote in the e-mail. “But I frankly doubt that my being chief judge will have any effect on the process. I’ve had my share of successes as well as failures when calling for en banc review. “There are not –…
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Almost En Banc
There’s a very unusual course of events leading up to the innocuous order dismissing the appeal in Foulon v. Klayman & Toskes, case no. 05-35383 (9th Cir. Mar. 24, 2008). For details on this strange tale of the unrequested en banc hearing that almost was (yes, you read that right), check out California Appellate Report, where Professor Martin calls what happened “sufficiently rare that it took me quite a while to figure out even what happened.” Then see why Appellate Law & Practice refers to at least one step in the procedure as “judicial activism.”
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California Supremes on the Right to Rehearing on Unbriefed Issues
When is a party entitled to a rehearing from the Court of Appeal? One such case — where the decision is based on an issue the parties did not have an opportunity to brief — is codified at Government Code section 68081: Before the Supreme Court, a court of appeal, or the appellate division of a superior court renders a decision in a proceeding other than a summary denial of a petition for an extraordinary writ, based upon an issue which was not proposed or briefed by any party to the proceeding, the court shall afford the parties an opportunity to present their views on the matter through supplemental briefing. …