Federal appellate courts: “a system of arranged marriage with no divorce”

The UChicago Law School has a post titled New York Times Profiles Judge Wood, which sets up the link to the NYT.


Within the setup:

The appeals bench, Judge Posner warned, was like “a system of arranged marriage with no divorce.” His message to his junior colleague was clear: Pick your battles carefully. Compromise when you can.

While Judge Posner is talking most directly about CA7, his advice pertains well to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or, for that matter, to the Supreme Court. There are a finite, and small, number of judges in a court, and they have to work together for a long time.

As to a New Jersey connection, the NYT article notes that Diane Wood spent her early years in Westfield, N.J. Wood was born in Plainfield.

In passing, LBE had courses at UChicago Law from Dennis Hutchinson (but not from Diane Wood). One of the classes LBE sat in on was on the legal status of slaves in pre-Civil War southern states, which proved to be more complex than one might have thought. [Separately, New Jersey actually allowed slavery at the time of the Civil War, but that's a different story.]

Link to NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/us/politics/22court.html