BluePhantom
Educator (of liberals)
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- #61
U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: U.S. Supreme Court again rejects most 9th Circuit decisions - Los Angeles TimesAnd neither prove your claim. The Government does in fact have the power authority and ability to DEFINE what Marriage is and has done so in 30 States. The 8th does not define marriage and so is useless in that regard.
The 9th is the most overturned court in the system and its ruling on California has no bearing on the other 30 States with Constitutions that state Marriage is between one man and one woman.
Unless the Supreme Court takes the case and rules specifically on the ability of a State to define Marriage it means nothing and my point stands and is in FACT the law of the land in 30 States.
U.S. Supreme Court again rejects most decisions by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
That’s more a consequence of ideology than judicial error.
It's also a consequence of some selective math, the size of the court, and it depends on the time frame in question. The SCOTUS picks cases to hear with the intent of overturning them. 76% of the cases heard by the SCOTUS this year have been overturned...that's the percentage of the total, not the 9th Circuit and that's low according to average. They don't have the time to accept cases that they know will stand so they only hear those with a legitimate question. The 9th is a massive court...almost three times larger than the average of the circuit courts so they get a TON more cases than the others. Their caseload makes up a disproportionate percentage of the total caseload for all 11 circuit courts. This means a greater number of cases to be potentially reviewed by the court and hence a higher number of cases the SCOTUS will hear from them as opposed to a different court.
When you have three times the volume you are going to end up with a disproportionate number of cases on a given SCOTUS calendar in comparison to other courts. Since the SCOTUS is predisposed to overturn the 9th will end up with the most overturns on raw volume. By percentage of cases before the SCOTUS they are usually higher than average but usually not nearly as much as people would have you believe. It depends on the year...in 2007 the 5th was overturned more. In 2010 the 5th and the 6th had a higher rate. In 2005 the 1st, 2nd, and 10th had a higher rate of being overturned. In 2004 they were lower than average. They have certainly had some embarrassing years. 1997 is one where they held a 95% overturn rate - OUCH!
But if you look at it another way you get another result. Because of their enormous caseload compared to other courts it also means that a lower percentage of the total number of cases from the 9th make it to the Supreme Court for review. The rest are allowed to stand by the SCOTUS. In other words the number of cases that are allowed to stand by the SCOTUS is vastly higher for the 9th than for other courts and so when you compare their overturn rate to the total number of cases they hear it's actually lower than other courts.
So...is the 9th overturned more? Yes and no...depends on how you look at it. If you look at only the cases that make it to the SCOTUS and express it only in bulk numbers, yes because of their massive caseload. If you express it as a percentage, sometimes they are overturned more, sometimes they are not...usually they are right around average. If you express it as a percentage of their overall caseload then they are actually the least overturned. Just depends on which game you want to play and which political angle you happen to be pounding.
Should the Ninth Circuit be Judged by Reversal Rates?
9th Circuit Overturned | Disorder in the court - Los Angeles Times
Supreme Court overturning numerous 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rulings - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Falwell wrongly labeled 9 th Circuit Court "the most overturned of all the appellate courts"
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