Inventive Kozinski Gives New Label to a Possibly Concurring Opinion
It’s not a dissent. It’s not a concurrence. It’s “Chief Judge Kozinski, disagreeing with everyone.”
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave that label to his opinion in an en banc immigration case on Friday, report the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, How Appealing, the California Appellate Report and the Ziff Blog.
“Just when you thought that every possible type of appellate opinion had already been created,” How Appealing, observes Kozinski “goes and invents one more.”
The court labeled Kozinski’s opinion a concurrence in a case that resulted in six separate opinions. According to Ziff Blog, Kozinski’s opinion is “a good example of how a concurrence doesn’t necessarily mean that the judge agrees with everything (or anything) the majority had to say in reaching the agreed-upon result.”
Kozinski has also campaigned for using the word “dissental” to refer to a dissent from an order denying rehearing en banc, the Law Blog says.
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