Oh, Judge Kozinski


It took me a while to get this one.

Judge Denman was still at it in 1952, when, as Chief Judge, he complained about “[t]he cavalier refusal of the court to consider the contentions of the corporation’s petition” and “[t]he shabby treatment of the litigant and his counsel in refusing to consider their contentions and authorities … .” W. Pac. R.R. v. W. Pac. R.R., 197 F.2d 994, 1018 (9th Cir. 1951) (Denman, C.J., dissental) (not a divorce case).

Alex Kozinski & James Burnham, I Say Dissental, You Say Concurral, 121 Yale L.J. Online 601, 604 n.20 (2012)


And it took me a while to figure out (I think) what took you a while.

In the meantime, I enjoyed reading about this culture of judicial self-criticism; and had a random thought that if we make an analogy between writing judicial opinions in court and writing personal opinions in a blog, then concurrals and dissentals would be analogous to blog comments. Unfortunately, that is a bad analogy, as this comment shows —- it neither concurs nor dissents, but merely replies.