If you are on an en banc court and think all of your colleagues got it wrong, how do you write your lead? You could go with the standard “concurring in part with X, Y, and Z, and dissenting in part with yada yada yada.” Or you could follow Alex Kozinski’s example:
Chief Judge KOZINSKI, disagreeing with everyone ...
Kendall Gray has dubbed this the Going Vinny opener. That works for me. So does Judge Kozinski’s opener. It is concise and informative and original—the gold standard of legal writing.
I don't like it. Rather, I would like it if he were actually "diagreeing with everyone", but his opinion is a concurrence. He disagrees *in part*, but he joins much the majority opinion, and agrees with much of their reasoning.
Re: concise and informative and original, I'll grant that it's concise and original, but in this case it seems somewhere between uninformative and misinformative. As I said, I don't like it.
Posted by: Joe | 25 October 2012 at 08:50 PM