Opinion ID: 2828807
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Law on Judicial Research into the Facts

Text: The ease of research on the internet has given new life to an old debate about the propriety of and limits to independent factual research by appellate courts.1 To be clear, I do not 1 See, e.g., Layne S. Keele, When the Mountain Goes to Mohammed: The Internet and Judicial Decision-Making, 45 N.M. L. Rev. 125 (2014); Allison Orr Larsen, The Trouble with Amicus Facts, 100 Va. L. Rev. 1757 (2014); Richard A. Posner, Judicial Opinions and Appellate Advocacy in Federal Courts—One Judge’s Views, 51 Duq. L. Rev. 3 (2013); Frederick Schauer, The Decline of “The Record”: A Comment on Posner, 51 Duq. L. Rev. 51 (2013); Elizabeth G. Thornburg, The Lure of the Internet and the Limits on Judicial Fact Research, Litig., Summer 2012, at 41; Brianne J. Gorod, The 34 No. 14-3316 oppose using careful research to provide context and background information to make court decisions more understandable. By any measure, however, using independent factual research to find a genuine issue of material, adjudicative fact, and thus to decide an appeal, falls outside permissible boundaries. Appellate courts simply do not have a warrant to decide cases based on their own research on adjudicative facts. This case will become Exhibit A in the debate. It provides, despite the majority’s disclaimers, a nearly pristine example of an appellate court basing a decision on its own factual research. The majority’s factual research runs contrary to several lines of well-established case law holding that a decisionmaker errs by basing a decision on facts outside the record. If a district judge bases a decision on such research, we reverse for a violation of Rule 201. E.g., Pickett v. Sheridan Health Care Center, 664 F.3d 632, 648–51 (7th Cir. 2011) (district court erred by relying on independent internet research on attorney fees without giving parties opportunity to address information). If jurors start doing their own research during a trial, a new trial is likely. United States v. Thomas, 463 F.2d 1061, 1062–65 (7th Cir. 1972); see also United States v. Blagojevich, 612 F.3d 558, 564 (7th Cir. 2010) (noting concern that messag- Adversarial Myth: Appellate Court Extra-Record Factfinding, 61 Duke L.J. 1 (2011); Elizabeth G. Thornburg, The Curious Appellate Judge: Ethical Limits on Independent Research, 28 Rev. Litig. 131 (2008); Coleen M. Barger, On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Judge: Appellate Courts’ Use of Internet Materials, 4 J. App. Prac. & Process 417 (2002). No. 14-3316 35 es to jurors would tempt them to engage in “forbidden research and discussion”). If an immigration judge or administrative law judge ba- ses a decision on facts without record support, we reverse it. See, e.g., Huang v. Gonzales, 403 F.3d 945, 948–50 (7th Cir. 2005) (reversing immigration decision based on alien’s answers to questions based on judge’s personal beliefs about alien’s religion); Nelson v. Apfel, 131 F.3d 1228, 1236–37 (7th Cir. 1997) (ALJ’s reliance on evidence outside record was erroneous but harmless). We are in no better a position to go outside the record for decisive facts. Our job is to reverse in cases where the decision-maker has gone outside the record. The majority in this case, however, not only does what we treat as reversible error when others do it; it holds in essence that the district judge erred by not doing such independent factual research. What was forbidden is now required. In addition to the case law holding that a decision-maker is not permitted to base a decision on evidence outside the record, another body of law is relevant to this issue: Federal Rule of Evidence 201 and the law of judicial notice. The majority opinion runs contrary to that law and misunderstands how Rule 201 and judicial notice fit together with the ordinary, adversarial presentation of facts. The vast majority of facts that courts consider when deciding cases comes from the familiar, adversarial presentations of evidence by opposing parties. The foundation of our legal system is a confidence that the adversarial procedures will test shaky or questionable evidence: “Vigorous crossexamination, presentation of contrary evidence, and careful 36 No. 14-3316 instruction on the burden of proof are the traditional and appropriate means of attacking shaky but admissible evidence.” Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 596 (1993). Those protective procedures are not available when a court decides to do its own factual research and bases its decision on what it finds. The law of evidence allows a narrow exception permitting some judicial research into relevant facts, under Federal Rule of Evidence 201 and the concept of judicial notice. Judicial notice “substitutes the acceptance of a universal truth for the conventional method of introducing evidence,” and as a result, courts must use caution and “strictly adhere” to the rule before taking judicial notice of pertinent facts. General Elec. Capital Corp. v. Lease Resolution Corp., 128 F.3d 1074, 1081 (7th Cir. 1997); see also Hennessy v. Penril Datacomm Networks, Inc., 69 F.3d 1344, 1354 (7th Cir. 1995) (“In order for a fact to be judicially noticed, indisputability is a prerequisite.”). The majority says twice it is not taking judicial notice of all the cited medical information from the internet. Ante at 13–14, 19. I agree it could not properly take judicial notice of this information under Evidence Rule 201(b) and (e). The proper timing of a patient’s doses of Zantac is not “generally known within the trial court’s territorial jurisdiction” and is not beyond “reasonable dispute,” nor can it be “accurately and readily determined from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned,” as Rule 201(b) requires. And the majority has made no effort to comply with the procedural requirements of Rule 201(e), essential to basic fairness, of giving the parties an opportunity to be heard on the evidence. No. 14-3316 37 If the majority is not taking judicial notice, what exactly is it doing? It seems to have created an entirely new, third category of evidence, neither presented by the parties nor properly subject to judicial notice. The majority writes: When medical information can be gleaned from the websites of highly reputable medical centers, it is not imperative that it instead be presented by a testifying witness. Such infor- mation tends to fall somewhere between facts that require adversary procedure to determine and facts of which a court can take judicial notice, but it is closer to the second in a case like this in which the evidence presented by the defendants in the district court was sparse and the appellate court need only determine whether there is a factual dispute sufficient to preclude summary judgment. Ante at 13 (emphasis added). In other words, the majority acknowledges that its “evidence” neither comes from adversarial presentation by the parties nor meets the strict substantive and procedural standards for judicial notice under Rule 201. Before this decision, American law has not recognized this category of evidence, which might be described as “nonadversarial evidence that the court believes is probably correct.” Compare the comments of the authors of Rule 201, the Advisory Committee Notes from 1972: The usual method of establishing adjudicative facts is through the introduction of evidence, ordinarily consisting of the testimony of wit- 38 No. 14-3316 nesses. If particular facts are outside the area of reasonable controversy, this process is dis- pensed with as unnecessary. A high degree of in- disputability is the essential prerequisite. In other words, the Federal Rules of Evidence allow no room for the majority’s innovation. Adversarial evidence and judicial notice are not opposite poles on a wide spectrum, with a middle ground for the majority’s evidence that has neither been subjected to adversarial testing nor a proper subject of judicial notice. These are two distinct categories. To be admissible, evidence must fall within one or the other. “Close” to judicial notice does not count. The majority has not offered any precedent from the law of evidence to support its reliance on its own factual research. Instead, it tries to downplay the unprecedented step it takes, including its emphasis that it is “not ordering that judgment be entered in Rowe’s favor” and that defendants will be entitled to rebut the majority’s factual research on remand. Ante at 19. The majority’s modest demurrer loses sight of the stakes. The issue on summary judgment is whether the evidence in the record would allow a reasonable jury to find in favor of the non-moving party. See Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 149–50 (2000); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 251–52 (1986). By reversing, the majority is necessarily finding that this record is sufficient to support a jury verdict for Rowe. I disagree. The majority also points out that “judges and their law clerks often conduct research on cases without disclosure to the parties.” Ante at 12. Such research has long been understood to involve only legal research. The majority’s effort to compare long-accepted judicial research into case law and No. 14-3316 39 statutes to its independent factual research shows the majority has entered unknown territory. To justify this venture, the majority asks a number of rhetorical questions and invokes the courage of the barons at Runnymede in 1215. Ante at 14. With respect, we are an intermediate appellate court. The Federal Rules of Evidence and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that we apply are adopted and amended through processes established by the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2071 et seq. We simply do not have authority on our own to take the law into this unknown territory.