Google directed me towards this odd post entitled, "When 'The Nine' Overrule the Ninth: O'Scannlian ponders 10 years of reversals."
Apparently, Judge O'Scannlain, who sits on the Ninth Circuit, is a lion among conservatives. I haven't done too much research, but he is a Reagan appointee and his most famous (or notorious) recent judicial act seems to have been joining the majority in concluding that an officer did not use excessive force when he tasered a pregnant woman.
The post is about a recent talk he gave at Harvard Law School (he's an alum) at which everyone basically celebrated the fact that the Supreme Court has overruled the Ninth Circuit so many times over the past ten years. The judge pointed out that this was particularly true in habeas cases. He said that, "'It seems that at least once every term, the Supreme Court has to remind us about the proper standard of review in habeas proceedings" under the AEDPA. He suggested that, in not following AEDPA guidelines, the Ninth Circuit was "abusing its authority of constitutional review." Strong words for what has become an easy target.
But the part I liked best was the question and answer session at the end of the post. In particular, the first question, which is just so fevered that it sounds as if it is right out of a Glenn Beck rally: "What do you say to your left-leaning colleagues who argue that their disagreement with the Supreme Court is good for democracy?" Yes, that's a rallying cry I hear every day from liberal judges: Let's defy the Supreme Court to promote democracy! Of course, I wasn't able to find anything remotely resembling this logic coming out of the mouths of any actual left-leaning judges (a group on the verge of extinction). It only seems to appear on right-wing websites.
Anyways, O'Scannlian handled the question well with a very vanilla answer about "predictab[ility]."
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