Kennedy v. Lockyer

“Now, I have nothing but the greatest respect for my panel colleagues' lawyerly acumen. But I do not find its exercise compatible with the basic obligations of the office we share. As judges, the essence of our role is restrained service as impartial arbiters of disputes framed by litigants. It is not, I respectfully suggest, to act as backup counsel when litigants make poor arguments, or when they come into court without first having "figured out" their cases n6 --even when doing so is motivated by a well-intentioned, but unavoidably standard-less "philosophy of law . . . infused by concepts like . . . social justice." n7

    
n7 Stephen Reinhardt and Howard Bashman, 20 Questions for Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, available at http://www.legalaffairs.org/howappealing/20q/2004_02_01_20q-
appellateblog_archive.html (quotation marks omitted); …”
Kennedy v. Lockyer, 379 F.3d 1041, 1065 (9th Cir. 2004)

    

   

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