This article addresses three
important developments in the
continuing battle over the precedential
status of unpublished federal
appellate court opinions.
First, effective January 1,
2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit began
offering Internet access to
its unpublished opinions at
its Web site, http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/.
Second, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia
Circuit earlier this month adopted
a local rule providing that
all of its decisions issued
during or after 2002, whether
published or unpublished, will
be binding precedent in that
circuit. Third, and in marked
contrast with these first two
developments, the Ninth Circuit
last year rebuffed two challenges
to the lawfulness of its local
rule that denies precedential
status to its unpublished opinions
and bars any citation to them.
The Third Circuit deserves praise
for making its unpublished opinions
available over the Internet
and on Westlaw and Lexis. The
first installment of this column,
published in December 2000,
beseeched the Third Circuit
to make its unpublished opinions
more readily available. Until
this month, the Third Circuit
was one of just a few federal
appellate courts that failed
to post its unpublished opinions
on the Internet and failed to
release its unpublished opinions
to Westlaw and Lexis for inclusion
in their electronic databases.
By providing easy access to
its unpublished opinions, the
Third Circuit allows the public
to determine for itself whether
these opinions, which the court
designates as "non-precedential,"
in fact break no new legal ground.
Decisions that break no new
legal ground generally exhibit
three characteristics. First,
the legal rules applied come
directly from earlier, precedential
opinions of the issuing court,
the U.S. Supreme Court, or (in
a diversity case) the highest
state appellate court. Second,
reasonable minds cannot disagree
that these legal rules apply
to the facts and circumstances
of the current appeal. Third,
reasonable minds cannot disagree
over the results produced by
applying these legal rules to
the facts and circumstances
presented.
Before the end of 2002, this
column will examine whether
the Third Circuit's unpublished
opinions issued this year truly
would qualify as "non-precedential"
even had the court failed to
designate them as such. For
present purposes, it is noteworthy
that the first two "non-precedential"
opinions to appear on the Third
Circuit's Web site in 2002 both
involved reversals of district
court rulings.
While the Third Circuit continues
to classify its unpublished
opinions as non-precedential,
several years ago it withdrew
a rule that had prohibited lawyers
from citing to its unpublished
opinions in briefs and at oral
argument. Many other federal
appellate courts continue to
prohibit citation to and reliance
on their unpublished decisions,
even while making those decisions
available over the Internet
and on Westlaw and Lexis. Although
the Third Circuit lets advocates
cite to its unpublished decisions,
the court has expressed its
intention to adhere to the policy
that the court will
not cite to its non-precedential
opinions as authority. If such
a policy were tenable, appellate
advocates would have little
reason to devote precious briefing
space or oral argument time
to refer to non-precedential
decisions that the Third Circuit
in the past has usually chosen
to ignore.
Soon, however, the Third Circuit
will discover that it is impossible
to ignore supposedly non-precedential
decisions that have indeed broken
new legal ground. How should
the Third Circuit respond when
that day inevitably arrives?
It should follow the path recently
charted by the D.C. Circuit.
That court's Rule 28(c)(1)(B),
which took effect January 1,
2002, provides: "All unpublished
orders or judgments of this
court, including explanatory
memoranda (but not including
sealed opinions), entered on
or after January 1, 2002, may
be cited as precedent."
Simultaneously, the D.C. Circuit
adopted Circuit Rule 36(c)(2),
which explains: "While unpublished
orders and judgments may be
cited to the court in accordance
with Circuit Rule 28(c)(1)(B),
a panel's decision to issue
an unpublished disposition means
that the panel sees no precedential
value in that disposition."
By means of these two new rules,
the D.C. Circuit has arrived
at the right answer to the dilemma
surrounding the precedential
value of unpublished appellate
opinions. The court will continue
to use unpublished opinions
to decide cases that, in the
court's view, lack precedential
value, but if the court has
erred in its prediction of no
precedential value, the court
and litigants can rely on the
unpublished decision as binding
precedent.
Contrastingly, the Ninth Circuit
in 2001 twice rejected challenges
to the legality of its local
rule prohibiting citation to
that court's unpublished decisions.
First, in Sorchini
v. City of Covina,
250 F.3d 706 (9th Cir. 2001)
(per curiam), a three-judge
panel consisting of Circuit
Judges Alex Kozinski, Richard
C. Tallman and District Judge
Frank R. Zapata ruled, over
Judge Tallman's unexplained
dissent, that the Ninth Circuit
would thereafter impose discipline
against lawyers who cited unpublished
Ninth Circuit decisions to the
court. "Unpublished dispositions
are neither persuasive nor controlling
authority," the majority wrote.
Later events suggest that Judge
Tallman dissented from the court's
refusal to impose discipline,
rather than from the court's
decision upholding the legality
of the no-citation rule.
Four months thereafter, Judge
Kozinski wrote a more fulsome
defense of the Ninth Circuit's
no-citation rule on behalf of
the same, this time unanimous,
three-judge panel in Hart
v. Massanari, 266 F.3d
1155 (9th Cir. 2001). Hart
quickly garnered attention because
Judge Kozinski attempted therein
to undermine the reasoning and
conclusions of Circuit Judge
Richard S. Arnold in his pathmarking
decision in Anastasoff
v. United States, 223
F.3d 898, vacated as moot,
235 F.3d 1054 (8th Cir. 2000)
(en banc). Anastasoff
had concluded that federal appellate
courts act unconstitutionally
when they purport to deny precedential
status to unpublished opinions.
Before one decides whether Judge
Arnold or Judge Kozinski has
the better argument on this
point, it must be noted that
Judge Arnold's understanding
of the role of stare decisis
at the time of the Constitution's
framing received support in
May 2001 from Justices Antonin
Scalia, John Paul Stevens and
Clarence Thomas. Rogers
v. Tennessee, 532 U.S.
451 (2001) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
The five Justices in the majority
in Rogers expressed
agreement with this aspect of
Justice Scalia's dissent.
Other highly-regarded federal
appellate judges have stated
views similar to those found
in Judge Arnold's decision in
Anastasoff. Then-Chief
Judge William J. Holloway, Jr.
of the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Tenth Circuit, in a
dissent joined in by Circuit
Judges James E. Barrett and
Bobby R. Baldock, questioned
the practice of denying precedential
status to unpublished appellate
opinions, In re Tenth Circuit
Rules, 955 F.2d 36 (10th
Cir. 1992) (Holloway, C.J.,
dissenting), as has retired
D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia
M. Wald, National Classification
Comm. v. United States,
765 F.2d 164 (D.C. Cir. 1985)
(Wald, J., writing separately)
(remarking on "the unfortunate
by-products of the overuse of
this rapidly growing mode of
disposition").
Even if reasonable minds can
disagree over the legality of
this practice (and longtime
readers of this column already
know that I side with Judge
Arnold on this issue), the more
important question remains whether
it is sound policy for federal
appellate courts to deny precedential
status to unpublished opinions.
On this point, Judge Kozinski's
opinion in Hart is
sorely lacking in persuasiveness.
Critics of the Ninth Circuit
might observe that it is not
surprising that its judges refuse
to be bound by that court's
unpublished opinions, because
Ninth Circuit judges so often
flout the rule that the court's
own published opinions serve
as binding precedent.
If a federal appellate court
is able to discharge its obligation
to try to reach the proper result
in every appeal, what value
is served by denying precedential
effect to earlier unpublished
opinions that have resolved
the very question that has again
presented itself to the court
for resolution? The only policy
argument that would cause me
to endorse Judge Kozinski's
view would be the argument that
federal appellate courts lack
the resources to decide every
appeal correctly, and therefore
those courts must be able to
distinguish the cases in which
they have confidence in the
correctness of their rulings
(the published opinions) from
the cases in which they lack
confidence in the correctness
of their rulings (the unpublished
opinions).
The vast majority of appeals
are decided by unpublished opinions.
It would certainly do a disservice
to the litigants therein to
be told that their cases lack
the importance necessary to
receive a result by which the
appellate court agrees to be
bound in the future, and thus
the result will bind only the
parties but not the court. This,
however, is the implicit message
conveyed to litigants whose
appeals are decided by means
of unpublished opinions that
lack precedential value.
Whether an opinion of an appellate
court has or lacks precedential
value should be a function of
what the opinion contains rather
than the label attached to it.
If the opinion involves the
application of a settled legal
rule to circumstances that the
rule clearly applies to, and
the result produced by applying
the rule is beyond reasonable
dispute, no advocate is likely
to cite to that decision if
it is issued as a not-for-publication
opinion. On the other hand,
where a federal appellate court
incorrectly predicts that a
given decision lacks precedential
value, and thus has erroneously
issued it as an unpublished
opinion, the court should afford
that opinion the same precedential
effect as a published opinion.
Thus, a panel in a later appeal
would be bound by an earlier
panel's ruling contained in
an unpublished opinion unless
the later appeal was heard en
banc and the full court overruled
the earlier panel's holding.
The eight active judges on the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit thought that this
approach made so much sense
that they have adopted it in
that court's local rules effective
January 1, 2002. The Third Circuit,
by releasing its newly-issued
unpublished opinions on its
Web site and to Westlaw and
Lexis, has taken an important
first step in this direction.
Next, and in the very near future,
the Third Circuit should (and
I predict will) recognize that
the time has come to abolish
the non-precedential status
of its unpublished opinions.
This article is reprinted with
permission from the January
14, 2002 issue of The Legal
Intelligencer � 2002 NLP IP
Company.
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