Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

Five judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have broken ranks with their colleagues and voiced support for the legality of President Trump's original travel ban.

The judges, all Republican appointees, said Wednesday they disagreed with the three-judge appeals panel that struck down the initial ban on travel from seven Muslim majority nations the administration said have terrorism problems and an inability to help the U.S. vet incoming immigrants.

"Wh**ever we, as individuals, may feel about the President or the Executive Order, the President's decision was well within the powers of the presidency," the judges stated in an unsolicited filing.

Rather than appeal to the wider circuit in an en banc hearing or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Trump administration fashioned a new version of the ban. A federal judge in Hawaii issued an injunction against the updated travel ban on Wednesday, a maneuver that could send the matter back to the same, oft-criticized Ninth Circuit which covers Hawaii.

The development comes as three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals testified Thursday at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on proposals to split the circuit. It is the largest of the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals and has a reputation for being ultra-liberal and frequently overruled by the Supreme Court.

Vanderbilt Law School Professor Brian Fitzpatrick pointed to what he called the "indisputable" fact that the circuit has the highest reversal rate of any court of appeals, and said one of the reasons for this was its size.

"If we go to smaller circuits we reduce the number of outlier decisions the court makes," he said. "Smaller courts lead to fewer outlier decisions." Circuit judges disagreed with Fitzpatrick, and said it would lead to other problems. "It would certainly increase delay on the appelate level, not decrease delay," Chief Judge Sidney Thomas told lawmakers. Thomas also said the vast majority of judges on the circuit are against breaking it up.

Democrats, meanwhile, warned about what they called "judicial gerrymandering." "To manipulate federal courts in order to achieve political ends you seek is highly inappropriate," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told his Republican colleagues. The five judges in the latest filing had hoped the Trump administration would appeal the original injunction to the entire Ninth Circuit where they could formally register their dissent or even reverse the three-judge panel's decision.

The comments do not impact the move by the federal judge in Hawaii who blocked Trump's new travel ban on Wednesday. Another federal judge in Maryland also issued an injunction against the travel ban, which critics say is a thinly veiled ban on Muslim immigration.

The Trump administration asserts that most of the world's Muslims are welcome to apply to travel to the U.S., but that the ban is necessary for national security. It originally banned travel from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Iraq was dropped from the original list.

The initial ban was well within the president's authority, according to the five judges. "The panel's errors are many and obvious" and the decision "stands contrary to well-established separation-of-powers principles," wrote Judge Jay Bybee in a 26-page filing. "We are all acutely aware of the enormous controversy and chaos that attended the issuance of the Executive Order," but "we cannot let our personal inclinations get ahead of important, overarching principles about who gets to make decisions in our democracy." "Such personal attacks treat the court as though it were merely a political forum in which bargaining, compromise, and even intimidation are acceptable principles," the judges added.

"The courts of law must be more than that, or we are not governed by law at all."

https://apple.news/A-8u0rzMjTYSqQ7h9WboMBg

fullspinzoo

It will be interesting to hear Merkel's take on the whole situation....whether or not she falls on her sword. To what extent she admits to her mistake of letting the immigrants into her country without "extreme vetting" will be a great lesson for us to watch and learn.

Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

Totally agree, Zoo. For her to express even a semblance of regret, will show a change in Europe's position on muslim immigration. We know she sees what's happening in France, and we know that her own fellow citizens are pleading with her to see what's going on in their own country as well as neighboring countries.

I hope she and Trump find some common ground today. 👍

fullspinzoo

You and me both, Worried. Can you imagine Hillary wanting to increase our influx of refugees by 550%? How devastating that would have been? So I hope they hit (Merkel and Trump) a similar message and that they are both 'on the same page'. And then I hope Merkel goes back with a positive outlook. PM Theresa May really surprised me when she kind of threw Trump under the bus when she returned to her homeland.

S. Maturin

And while those turncoat judges place their allegiance to the progressive movement above their duty and sworn oath, we are left to accept hundreds of questionable people with questionable backgrounds and very questionable goals. Those judges, by obviously violating their oaths- and bragging about it publicly, are acting as t*****rs and need to be removed.. defrocked, arrested, tried, and then given nice public h*****gs.

fidelis

That's why it is known as the ninth CIRCUS.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Here's a trial lawyer's report on the five judges opinions.

Five 9th Circuit Judges Dish Out Ruthless Take Down to Anti-Trump Travel Ban Decision

by Robert Barnes | 8:56 am, March 16th, 2017

In one of the most ruthless opinions issued of fellow panel judges, five judges from across the political spectrum in the Ninth Circuit went out of their way to issue an opinion about a dismissed appeal, to remind everybody just how embarrassingly bad the prior Ninth Circuit stay panel decision was on Trump’s travel ban. The five judges included the famed, and most respected intellectual amongst the Ninth Circuit, Alex Kozinski. The others included Jay Bybee, Consuelo Callahan, Carlos Bea and Sandra Ikuta. Nobody other than the original panel came to the defense of the original panel decision, a less than promising start for future approvals of district court interference in P**********l immigration policy.

The language of the opinion was almost Scalian: the five Ninth Circuit judges noted their “obligation to correct” the “manifest” errors so bad that the “fundamental” errors “confound Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit precedent.” The district court questioned any judge issuing a “nationwide TRO” “without making findings of fact or conclusions of law” on the merits of the matter and conducting published opinions on seminal matters of national security based on “oral argument by phone involving four time zones.”

Aside from the procedural defects of the process, the five panel jurists then noted the deep legal problems with the panel’s order: its a-historicity, it’s abdication of precedent, and its usurpation of Constitutionally delegated P**********l rights. Mirroring much of the Boston judge’s decision, the five judges then detail and outline what other critics, skeptics and commentators have noted of the prior panel decision, including critical commentary from liberal law professors and scribes Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz, and Jeffrey Toobin. The original 3-judge panel “neglected or overlooked critical cases by the Supreme Court and by our making clear that when we are reviewing decisions about who may be admitted into the United States, we must defer to the judgment of the political branches.” Of particular note, the five panel judges note how the 3-judge panel decision in “compounding its omission” of Supreme Court decisions and relevant sister Circuit precedents, also “missed all of our own cases” on the subject. The 5 judges conclude the panel engaged in a “clear misstatement of law” so bad it compelled “vacating” an opinion usually mooted by a dismissed case.

The five judges note some of the absurdities in the original 3-judge panel decision: claiming a consular officer must be deferred to more than the President of the United States; claiming first amendment rights exist for foreigners when the Supreme Court twice ruled otherwise; the claim that people here could claim a constitutional right for someone else to travel here, a decision specifically rejected by the Supreme Court just a year ago; and analogous Trumpian kind of immigration exclusion was uniformly approved by Circuit courts across the country in decisions issued between 2003 and 2008. As the five panelists conclude, the overwhelming precedent and legal history reveals a court simply cannot “apply ordinary constitutional standards to immigration policy.”

The five judges don’t quit there, though. They go on to identify other “obvious” errors. As the 5 judges note, the 3-judge panel hid from the most important statute, noting the 3-judge panel “regrettably” “never once mentioned” the most important statutory authority: section 1182(f) of title 8. Additionally, the 3-judge panel failed to even note the important P**********l power over immigration that all courts, Congress, and the Constitution expressly and explicitly gave him in all of its prior precedents.

Unsatisfied with that harsh condemnation, the five judges go even further. The judges concur with the Boston judge’s understanding of “rational basis” review, and condemn the Seattle judge’s and the 3-judge panel’s misapplication and elemental misunderstanding of what “rational basis” is. As the 5 judges note, “so long as there is one facially legitimate and bona fide reason for the President’s actions, our inquiry is at an end.” The issue is whether a reason is given, not whether a judge likes or agree with that reason. That means the executive order sufficed, and no further consideration of the reasons for Trump’s order were allowed.

The five judges still weren’t finished. Next up, the ludicrous suggestion the President had to produce classified and national security information to explain and explicate publicly all the empirical reasons he felt the order needed for safety rationales. As the five judges panel note, judges are not New York Times editors here to substitute for the President at their unelected will. A gavel is not a gun; a judge is not the commander in chief. And, again the 5 panel judges noted the Supreme Court specifically condemned just this kind of demand from judges — demanding classified information to second guess executively privileged decisions. As the court concluded, “the President does not have to come forward with supporting documentation to explain the basis for the Executive Order.”

The panel wraps up its ruthless condemnation of its fellow 3-panel decision by noting their errors are “many and obvious,” including the failure to even “apply the proper standard” of review. As the five judges wisely note: “we are judges, not Platonic guardians,” and the great losers of the 3-panel decision are those that believe e******ns matter and the rule of law deserves respect, as both were sacrificed for results-oriented judges who ignored the law and evaded the historical precedent to try to reverse the policy outcome of the recent e******n.

Robert Barnes is a California-based trial attorney whose practice focuses on Constitutional, criminal and civil rights law.

Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

Yes. This was excellent when you posted it on that other thread last night, where Progressive One interrupted things. I considered cutting and pasting it here, but I don't like to do that sort of thing. I know it's an open forum and all, but I consider things like that to be your material, that you researched and found on lawnewz. A website that I enjoy perusing very much. I'm ecstatic and very appreciative that you've chosen to post it here as well; thank you Blade.

S. Maturin

Since judges are predominately drawn from the lawyer class (few of those positions actually require one to be a lawyer), and there are almost no honest or moral lawyers, we should expect to need some power of law to rein in those who are asses and/or i***ts.
We do have those laws, but, like a lot of other laws, they go unenforced. There's a crime compounded by larger crime. Lawyers see themselves as a 'higher breed' and they hang together and protect themselves from us, the rabble.