Talk:United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Example deletion

feel free to add more examples; do -not- delete valid information

Just because information is valid does not mean it should appear in an article. The Ninth Circuit has been around for a long time, listing a single case from June 2002 and implying that it is the only controversial case or somehow demonstrative of anything at all does not illustrate good editorial practice. It dates the article horribly. Boiling down the Ninth Circuit to a single controversial case is deceptive and leads to the perception (POV) that they generate cases likely to be overturned, that retired judges are more often involved in those cases, etc. I'm working on finding a longer list of significant cases and I will not be listing that case unless it's clear that it's one of the most significant ones since the court's inception. Wikipedia is not about reporting current events. Daniel Quinlan 02:46, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

Please do read the policy, Daniel:

I've read the policy. I think it's actually a bit incomplete in its admonishment of turning articles into news reports since it doesn't address the problem of excessive present-day current events in articles. Daniel Quinlan 15:15, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not: A news report. Wikipedia should not offer news reports on breaking stories. However, creating encyclopedia articles on topics currently in the news is an excellent idea. See current events for some examples. ...When updating articles with recent news, authors should use the past-tense in such a way that the news will still make sense when read years from now. [emph. mine]

This, and you, are addressing something completely different than my objection. I was not objecting to writing in present tense. Daniel Quinlan 15:15, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

What this policy refers to is articles of the type "On Monday, President Bush announced that he will immediately withdraw all troops from Iraq." Articles should be written in an encyclopedic manner, that is, in such a fashion that the information within them continues to make sense without requiring frequent minor updates. That's also why we have redirects such as As of 2003 in place which allow us to quickly correct information which is no longer up to date (by checking "What links here" on that redirect in 2004). Wikipedia was excellent in integrating up to date information during the Sep. 11 attacks (even though it was still a very small project then) and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in real-time. Aside from that, the court decision in question is hardly a matter of up-to-the-minute news, being made in 2002.

I agree with you, of course, that the article should include many of the court's historical cases. However, articles often start with just a fraction of the information about the subject -- that does not mean that this information should be removed until the rest of the information is added. Articles do not need to be complete at any given point in time (and in fact probably never are). See also Wikipedia:Perfect stub article, which goes so far to suggest starting a stub article provocatively.—Eloquence 02:56, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

I think you missed my point, but I'll concede that you've made yours in the article. Daniel Quinlan 15:15, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

Most overturned circuit?

The Ninth Circuit is the most overturned appeals court in the United States.. In total numbers, that is correct. In terms or percentages of cases which are heard by the US Supreme Court, that is not correct. A larger percentage of cases is overturned from other courts than from the Ninth. It's only that more cases from the Ninth get moved up to the Supreme Court that it has so many cases overturned. And in the latest term, only one more than the next-overturned, which one it is, I don't recall right now. RickK 06:19, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes and no. First, more cases are heard from the Ninth Court in general. Many fewer are heard from other courts, so it is easy for another court to bat a high percentage if only a few cases are being heard. I believe the speculation is that the Supreme Court keeps a much closer eye on the Ninth Circuit than other courts. If you also look at the last 5 or 10 years, the statistics are also much clearer that the Ninth Circuit is the most overturned. By way of analogy, it's like the Yankees. They don't win the World Series every year, but they are the best team this last decade. Sure, if you only look at a single year or two, someone else might have a higher percentage, but the gap widens over time.

Nevertheless, let's include some good statistics! Per-decade might be about right, I think. Daniel Quinlan 06:44, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

Someone should point out that the paragraph included is a biased word-for-word copy from http://www.centerforindividualfreedom.org/legal/9th_circuit.htm, which is a far-right lobbying group. Comparing the number of overturned cases from the 9th to "all the state cases combined" is highly prejudicial and irrelevant. You can't compare federal appellate and state courts. Furthermore, focusing on a single year (2002), the year BEFORE Bush appointed 7/28 members of the 9th is also misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.124.155.213 (talk) 06:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Appointer information cannot be right

The article says, speaking of judges on the court in 2001:

18 were appointed by Democrat Presidents (4 by Jimmy Carter and 14 by Bill Clinton) and 7 were appointed by Republican Presidents (3 by Ronald Reagan, 4 by the George H. W. Bush)

It then goes on to say that a 2002 opinion for the majority was written by a Nixon appointee. Unless Nixon appointed someone to the court between 2001 and 2002, either he was not a Nixon appointee, or the above list of who appointed how many judges is wrong. --Delirium 23:24, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Verified that Goodwin was appointed by Nixon ([1]). The other info should probably be commented out until someone can find a place to re-check the facts and alter it to be accurate. However I won't edit the page while it's protected; if someone could track down a disinterested admin to do it that would be great. - Hephaestos 23:32, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Appointer information is definitely right

I double-checked the information during my last edit spurt on this article. Goodwin is an inactive (read: semi-retired) judge. The 18/7 figure is for active judges who hear the vast majority of cases. I'll make a note in the article if there already isn't one. Daniel Quinlan 23:36, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks. - Hephaestos 23:55, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How many judges?

The first paragraph claims the court has 24 judges. The second claims it has 27. Which is correct? — (unsigned contribution by 62.253.130.205 on August 19, 2004

This issue was cleaned up by Postdlf on that same August 19. The circuit has 28 permanent judgeships. I'd like to do some research confirming this, but there appear to be 25 judges at the moment. — DLJessup 20:55, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rewrite

Frustrated by the article as it was, I rewrote it in anticipation of adding the charts and other info standard to courts of appeals pages. I welcome your feedback. --Saucy Intruder 20:16, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think it is beginning to look much better after your edits. --Coolcaesar 22:12, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Over wikified

Please can we re-wikify the article so that we don't have so many blind links. Opinions please --Chazz88 17:04, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Red links are not always bad. They automatically initiate an article request that ends up on WP:AR1 or WP:AR2 after one or two years, respectively. (At least, if I understand the process.) Virtually nothing remains red-linked longer than 18 months, but if the links are removed, no one will know where to put the links when the article is finally created. I agree that it looks bad to have a lot of red links, but the solution isn't to remove the red links -- it's to create articles on those subjects!--chris.lawson 17:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Confusing treatment of Ninth Circuit split proposals

Is there any actual support for this claim?

This bill was reintroduced in the 109th Congress as the Ninth Circuit Judgeship and Reorganization Act of 2005, H.R. 211, co-sponsored by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the same Republican Congressmen who had sponsored the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judgeship and Reorganization Act of 2003. This proposal would substantially align the states within each new circuit along political lines. Each state proposed as part of the new Ninth and Thirteenth Circuits (except for Alaska) cast its electoral votes for Democrat John F. Kerry in 2004, while each state proposed as part of the new Twelfth Circuit cast its electoral votes for Republican George W. Bush in 2004.

The previously referenced bill (the one that was apparently "reintroduced") isn't even close to this claim. Either it's been radically rewritten (which should be acknowledged as a separate bullet point) or the writer has no idea which states voted which way.

--69.140.81.84 01:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

In all fairness to the author of the claim, H.R. 211 does split the Ninth Circuit as described. However, what the author doesn't acknowledge is that the bill introduced immediately after H.R. 211 is H.R. 212, which would split the Ninth Circuit into two circuits, each with partisan balance in its allocation of states. Moreover, there are several additional bills in the current Congress, each of which proposes some way to split the Ninth Circuit: H.R. 3125, S. 1296, S. 1301, S. 1845.

— DLJessup (talk) 04:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

why does clinton has so many appointees?

?--Capsela 15:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• The president gets to appoint judges to fill vacancies created when old judges retire (just like the Supreme Court). Clinton has many appointees because many 9th Circuit judges retired while Clinton was president. Some federal judges make a point of retiring during the administration of a president who shares their ideology, so that they will likely be replaced by a judge with similar views. bd2412 T 15:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Some ten seats were created in 1978, during the Carter administration. (This is why Carter, who had only a single term, appointed 15 judges while Reagan only appointed 10 in his two terms.) Many of Carter's appointees then left office during the Clinton administration. (Note that this may not necessarily indicate intent on the Carter judges' part: the judges seem to have left the bench after about 18 years on average, and 18 years is a decent run for a federal judge.) — DLJessup (talk) 15:58, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

table

The table listed the population in thousands. When I see 54,000 thousands it isn't exactly clear. So I added three 0s to the end of all of them and just put it as the real number. ABart26 04:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Frequent reversals

While advocates of splitting the Ninth Circuit frequently point to the court's frequent reversal rate, they sometimes mean that the Supreme Court must disproportionately intervene in cases where the Ninth Circuit has sided with an unpopular group. I added the description of Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), to show that in some cases where the Supreme Court reverses the Ninth Circuit, the Court has done so where the Ninth Circuit has sided with the government. ---Axios023 06:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Update: I clarified what I wrote for greater precision. ---Axios023 04:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Consistency of decisions

I deleted a reference to a site maintained by a pro se litigant before the court as evidence of the proposition that the court's unpublished decisions conflict with its published decisions. That site does not espouse a neutral point of view. ---Axios023 03:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I concur. --Coolcaesar 07:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Time travel?

Someone writing in 2003 refuted someone's statement in 2006? Wow. When did we discover this technology? 129.171.233.29 14:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Republicans

Why do Republicans have to constantly inject a political agenda into EVERY Wiki article?Ray Ash 04:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe they're balancing the Democrats doing the same? Either way people need to observe WP:NPOV. -- Atama^chat 18:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Every one? I haven't seen that in evidence. Wikipedia's horrific liberal bias kinda negates that. 64.111.151.124 (talk) 23:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It's much more likely that you have a conservative bias than that Wikipedia--a worldwide encyclopedia with thousands of editors--has a "horrific liberal bias". Chillowack (talk) 05:57, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Possible Copyvio?

The section on "most overturned court" is verbatim equivalent to the one at http://www.centerforindividualfreedom.org/legal/9th_circuit.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.218.238.148 (talk) 16:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the "most overturned court" section because, as this individual has pointed out, it was simply copy and pasted from another website without any fair use argument or even citation. The individual who wrote this paragraph did not bother doing any independent research and didn't even bother to paraphrase. Added to this problem, I believe the paragraph should be deleted anyway since the website from which it was copied is clearly from an organization with a specific outspoken political agenda and there is no attempt given to varify any of the facts that have been pasted here. The "reasearch" is pointed, biased and fails to make the slightest attempt to give balanced and complete data. For instance, no consideration is given to how large and populated the Ninth Circuit is thereby failing to consider the possibility that more cases are overturned from the ninth circuit than anywhere else in terms of raw nationwide percentages is because they account for a much larger percent of appeals period. Even then there is no reason to believe that the website's data is even correct given that there is no cited research which supports its claims. But all of that is besides the point, copying and pasting from another website (especially when it is such a small amount) is not only supremely lazy but it is also a clear violation of Wikipedia rules and guidelines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jdlund (talk • contribs) 15:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Court of Appeals Mourns Passing of Senior Circuit Judge Warren J. Ferguson

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued this news release today.[2] ThreeOneFive (talk) 01:35, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

The criticism part is pretty consistent, but a bit long, to the extent that it's maybe not a bad idea to ponder splitting the section into an independent article. ADM (talk) 03:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The criticism section needs work. It reads more like a persuasive argument to disprove the assumptions than an encyclopedic attempt at explaining what they are. 151.207.244.4 (talk) 14:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Brunetti's death

Senior Judge Melvin T. Brunetti died last week, see [3]. I've updated the article accordingly. This also led me to look into the vacancies (although, as a Senior, Brunetti's death did not cause a vacancy) and I've corrected that section as well. TJRC (talk) 02:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Power

I came to this page so that I can find out what affect this court's rulings have on the Ninth Circuit. I'm specifically talking about the Prop 8 trial. If this court overturns Prop 8, does that mean same-sex marriage will be legal in the entire Ninth Circuit or just California? 72.106.221.130 (talk) 03:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Table standardization

Please note and contribute to this discussion. Billyboy01 (talk) 23:10, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Non Random assignments

Stop edit warring. If you object, follow the WP:IMPROVE policy. BRD is not a policy, or a guideline. More importantly, I've no idea what you think is wrong with my representation of the source so I can't improve my edit that you have reverted with no explanation. --Elvey^(t•c) 01:21, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Your edit does not "improve" the article; it makes it worse. It is not "edit warring" to revert to a settled, superior version (and, BTW, assume good faith). This "purported" court policy doesn't exist: It is an claim being made primarily by a disgruntled litigant. Both the court's chief judge and chief executive say there is no such policy. From one your source's source: "The allegation of panel rigging based on a supposed statistical analysis is completely bogus and totally unsupported by any facts." It violates WP:NOTABLE and WP:WEIGHT for wikipedia to promote this fiction as plausible. --Weazie (talk) 02:25, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Wow, way to pound on the table! It's edit warring to revert repeatedly without discussing when the other party is discussing. AGAIN, please read and honor the WP:IMPROVE policy (Excerpts: "Improve pages wherever you can." "Do not remove information solely because it is poorly presented; instead, improve the presentation by rewriting the passage." etc.) I made a compromise edit - GUESSing at objection, because you refused to specify what your objection was.

WP:IMPROVE is a policy. BRD is not.) The court's chief judge admitted there IS such policy. What is undisputed is that the Ninth Circuit does not assign cases to judges in a fully random manner, according to the court's own statement (which is in the article), as well as THREE studies cited in a Verdict: Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia article. Who is this disgruntled litigant that got three studies to be performed to show the same things and got Justia to write about it? Who? If reasonable people disagree, it's our job to present the case made by both sides. So the "The allegation of panel rigging based on a supposed statistical analysis is completely bogus and totally unsupported by any facts." quote would be good to include. The Times also quotes: Law Professor Chilton: “If any of the 12 circuits are using a nonrandom process,” he said, “it’s most likely to be the Ninth Circuit.” ... “We know for a fact that the composition of panels affects the outcomes of cases” ... “The reason we’re O.K. with this is because the process is supposed to be perfectly random.” And the fact that the Times wrote about it at length suggests there's no WP:WEIGHT issue, and ignorant of the fact that WP:NOTABLE is about article subjects, not individual pieces of content in an article. ("The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article.")--Elvey^(t•c) 03:23, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Here's how the article on same-sex marriage in the United States describes the issue: "[O]n October 13, the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear Sevcik en banc, charging that the Ninth Circuit's assignment of judges to cases that raise LGBT rights issues 'did not result from a neutral judge-assignment process.'" A one-sentence summary, in a much longer article about a specific topic, which accurately describes who is making what allegation.

The justia source, the sources its cites, and other articles on the subject do not support changing this article to include this allegation in this article. The court's statements say that (the very limited) practice of assigning some cases based on seniority has been discontinued; it is no longer in effect, and hence not worthy of inclusion in this article. The first "study" cited in the justia source is the actually the evidence from the losing litigants (Coalition for the Protection of Marriage). The second study is about the how the selection of district judges affects the composition of appellate panels; it says absolutely nothing about the Ninth Circuit. The third study says statistics indicate there is a degree of non-randomness in the assignment of appellate panels -- a trend not limited to just the Ninth Circuit. The authors of the study then list very legitimate, reasonable, non-controversial reasons to explain such non-randomness, again making the issue not worthy of inclusion in this article, especially considering this study was not limited to the 9th Circuit.

That the Times wrote an article does not mitigate WP:WEIGHT concerns: it is reporting on the belief of a small minority; it would give undue weight to minority opinion to suggest it is serious one held by significant number of people. WP:IMPROVE does not prevent other editors from removing information from an article that didn't merit inclusion in the first place. --Weazie (talk) 21:32, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I see no evidence that the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage folks are behind all THREE studies cited in a Verdict: Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia article. You made that claim, and now you are backing off from it? If you can provide even half-decent evidence of that, or good evidence that the issue of nonrandom case assignment is a bogus issue in the eyes of all but a small minority of those looking at the issue of nonrandom case assignment, I would cease to object to your unjustified edit warring. You claimed the content violated WP:NOTABLE. And now you are backing off from that claim too. The fact that the practice of assigning some cases based on seniority existed but has been discontinued remains important. Multiple sources we've discussed on the subject support including this in the article. It's reprehensible behavior, and the fact that a reprehensible (IMO) litigant group brought the reprehensible behavior to light don't make the behavior any less unacceptable. If the allegations were just cooked up nonsense from people I consider to be bigots, I don't think the Times would report on them the way that it did. I don't see where "the authors of the study list very legitimate, reasonable, non-controversial reasons to explain such non-randomness" in selections. They provide non-nefarious reasons, but they're far from legitimate, reasonable, or non-controversial. The law requires they be random. They clearly aren't random. The resultant appearance of bias alone makes the issue worthy of inclusion, if not in this article, in another on the circuit courts, no? So please follow WP:IMPROVE accordingly, because the process is supposed to be perfectly random. --Elvey^(t•c) 22:59, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

As this Slate article notes, the no federal court is legally required to ensure that case assignments are prefectly random. Even the justia source notes that it isn't the law.

The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage is behind one of the "studies." The second study has nothing to with the Coalition's allegations (and nothing to do with the Ninth Circuit); it is a non-sequitar. The third study is also a non-sequitar, as it was studying how panels (in all circuits) are composed, not what cases are assigned to panels; and, again, the authors noted "non-nefarious" reasons for imperfection in panel selection. WP:MOLEHILL.

The entire "impropiety in case assignment" argument is based just on the Coalition's allegations. It is being cheered on by a few conservatives (i.e., Ronald Rotunda (the author of the justia piece), a National Review writer). It gives undue weight when suggesting the Coaliton's allegations are believed by a significant minority, and they therefore need not be included about this article about the Ninth Circuit. Weazie (talk) 00:28, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all that. Indeed, it says in Slate, "There’s nothing illegal or deceitful about this method...; the 9th Circuit isn’t bound by law or judicial ethics to devise a purely random selection process." I'm astonished, but I don't see other sources disagreeing. While I see no evidence that the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage folks are behind all THREE studies cited, I'll take your word on it. FYI, I have a suspicion that a number of legal processes that I think should also be purely random selection process, aren't, e.g. jury service calls and judicial mediator assignment. But I'll make no further inclusion effort here. --Elvey^(t•c) 21:28, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

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Vacancies and pending nominations

Bybee is retiring, it has been reported elsewhere, but as of July 4, 2019, it is not on Future Judicial Vacancies as listed in the citation. It will be, of course, but I find it lazy to intentionally create a fake (so far) citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CarlCanton (talk • contribs) 00:21, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Fello Wikipedians, Former Judge Harry Pregerson is listed as Senior Status. Does that still apply? He died last November. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:AD19:EF00:645D:AD9F:E428:9FCD (talk) 01:43, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes. The vacancy section lists the reason why the seat came open, not the current status of the former judge. The vacancy was created by Judge Pregerson's decision to take senior status, and when someone is nominated their paperwork will read "vice Harry Pregerson, retired" (as opposed to, for example, "vice Stephen Reinhardt, deceased"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.241.40.131 (talk) 16:38, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

"Rate of overturned decisions" section

I have removed the following recent addition to the article, as it appears to be more of a personal essay than encyclopedic material:

Rate of overturned decisions

The 9th circuit has the highest frequency of rulings reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, but not what lawyers would call the highest rate of reversals. In the Supreme Court October 2017 Term (Oct 2017 through September 2018) there were a total of 43 circuit court decisions that were reviewed and reversed by the Supreme Court. Of those 43 reversals, 12 were from the 9th circuit. Compare those 12 reversals of 9th circuit rulings to 2.5 reversals -the median number of reversals for the other twelve circuit courts. So, for one looking at quantity per time, the 9th had the highest rate of reversals. In terms of average time between reversals, the 9th court has the highest frequency of reversals. Oct 2013 through Sep 2018 the 9th circuit court was reversed for 48 out of the total 218 reversals for all 13 circuit courts. In all 5 of those years, the 9th circuit had the more reversals than any other circuit court. The 9th court averaged 9.6 reversals per year (48 reversals/ 5 years). The median number of reversals for all 13 circuit courts during those 5 years was 2.6 per year. . So why would lawyer's not call that the highest "rate" of reversals? Per the November 22, 2018 AP article "AP Fact Check Trump's Misinformation on Appeals Court" by Calvin Woodward and Mark Sherman, the authors stated "(President) Trump is wrong in suggesting that rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are reversed more frequently than those of any other federal appeals court." The pair reference scotusblog.com for their source data and go on to describe "rate" in terms of reversals per review, ignoring President Trumps term "frequency". While lawyers (or AP writers) may look at their loss/attempt ratio when referring to "rate", that does not invalidate the general, dictionary use, of frequency to indicate more per time. The 9th court is overturned more often than any other circuit court. Two potential reasons for being overturned so much:

First: The 9th jurisdiction, as stated elsewhere in this wiki article, represents nearly 20% of the national population. If one assumes 20% of population means 20% of case load, and all else being equal that would mean this one court would provide 20% of rulings reviewed on appeal to the supreme court. All else still equal that would mean 20% of the reversals, 1 out of 5 of all circuit court reversals, would be against this court. That alone would give this court the highest frequency of reversals. But it doesn't account for the 12 out of 43, or 28% of reversals in the Oct 2017 Term. That is nearly half again what is explained by the population ratio.

Second: The 9th court may be influenced by liberal politics. As AP reporters Woodward and Sherman wrote: "It's not unusual for those challenging a president's policies to sue in courts they consider likely to back their claims, and it's true that the 9th circuit is a liberal-leaning court." Politically charged cases with rulings from a "liberal-leaning court" such as injunctions against a conservative leaning president attempting to enforce immigration laws and border security, can be enough to raise 8 reversals (20% of total circuit court reversals) to the known 12 for 28% of total reversals. So 8/12 or 2/3 of the reversals may come from population and case load, that leaves 1/3 potentially due to political bias pointed out by the AP.

Simply put, raw data (scotusblog.com) shows this court is reversed more than any other circuit court by a large margin. To make it look less significant one would need to make a ratio based on population or case load, but that still leaves the 9th as the most reversed of 13 courts for every year 2013 to 2018. Another way to diminish the fact this court is more reversed than any other circuit court would be to make an arbitrary reversal/review ratio as if appealing for a supreme court review were purely random and an arbitrary ratio would make the total number of bad rulings look irrelevant. So courts with only one case appealed, who lose, seem to be much worse with their 100% rate of reversed cases, compared to the 9th circuit which had 12 times as many cases reversed in the October 2017 Term, more than twice as many as any other circuit court, but only about an 80% "rate" which puts them near the middle, or only third worst.

From 1999 to 2008, of the 0.151% of Ninth Circuit Court rulings that were reviewed by the Supreme Court, 20% were affirmed, 19% were vacated, and 61% were reversed; the median reversal rate for all federal appellate courts was 68.29% for the same period. From 2010 to 2015, of the cases it accepted to review, the Supreme Court reversed around 79 percent of the cases from the Ninth Circuit, ranking its reversal rate third among the circuits; the median reversal rate for all federal circuits for the same time period was around 70 percent.

Some argue the court's high percentage of reversals is illusory, resulting from the circuit hearing more cases than the other circuits. This results in the Supreme Court reviewing a smaller proportion of its cases, letting stand the vast majority of its cases.

References

Bad Arithmetic In "Rate of overturned decisions"

The implied arithmetic in the statement "Some argue the court's high percentage of reversals is illusory, resulting from the circuit hearing more cases than the other circuits. This results in the Supreme Court reviewing a smaller proportion of its cases, letting stand the vast majority of its cases." is either incomplete or incorrect. Is it the case that the Supreme Court allocates a fixed rate of appeals for each circuit? If so, that might explain it, but I don't believe it to be the case. Some clarification of this argument is necessary. Jim Bowery (talk) 20:08, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Tallman's Relocation

Judge Tallman moved from Seattle to Coeur d'Alene in the fall of 2018 (source: https://www.cdapress.com/local_news/20181107/students_love_the_law__and_pizza_too). This article was updated at the time but another editor recently changed his duty station back to Seattle. I've corrected this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.241.40.131 (talk) 18:17, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Improper deletion of section heading (possible vandalism)

Headings adjusted so that it "makes sense." Also, deleted the word "controversy" to eliminate confusion for those who do not understand what a controversy is. Also, removing unwarranted commentary from a dictionary page which is supposed to provide factual content is no"vandalism" (the deliberate destruction of public property) to any reasonable person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:646:300:70:A8EC:944D:4E87:3C0F (talk) 21:11, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I just reverted again an improper deletion of a section heading, "Controversy," because the result of the edit is that the subsections under Controversy end up under the preceding heading, "History," which makes zero sense. If the term Controversy is biased or inappropriate, the correct approach is to come up with a better heading, rather then creating a huge mess under the History section by trying to jam material into that section that doesn't really fit that rubric. --Coolcaesar (talk) 20:55, 20 March 2021 (UTC)