Court Opinion

ID: 9458919
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:05:18.444996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:56.383044
License: Public Domain

IRVING R. KAUFMAN, Circuit Judge
(with whom Judges MANSFIELD and MULLIGAN concur):
It is unfortunate that our brothers Timbers and Oakes have chosen this case to express their disappointment over the result of the en banc vote. Although it is true that the Rule authorizes a rehearing en bane only when ordered by a “majority of the circuit judges of the circuit who are in regular active service”, 28 U.S.C. § 46, the governing statute, provides that a senior judge who sat in the original hearing of the case may, in the event the case is reheard en banc, vote on the merits of the appeal. Accordingly, it would be ironic if this case were en banced, as urged by Judges Timbers and Oakes, since a minority of the judges qualified to ultimately vote on the merits would carry the day. Moreover, it is not unreasonably presumptuous to predict that Judge Smith, who authored a thoroughly considered opinion for the panel, and Judge Moore, who concurred with him, would have opposed a rehearing en banc if given that opportunity, and would have adhered to their original views on the merits, had the case been reheard en banc, notwithstanding the sparse citation in our brother Timbers’s opinion. In either instance, there would have been a majority voting against those who favored a rehearing en banc.1
In view of the circumstances of this case, I fear our dissenting brothers have *1041staked too much upon the label senior or active.
I fully concur in the views expressed in Judge Mansfield’s opinion.

. As for the contention in the dissenting opinion that “The issue is whether a 3-judge minority — on a Court for which Congress has provided a 9-judge complement, 28 U.S.C. § 44(a) (1970) — may block the reconsideration en banc which the majority wants . . . . ,” we call to our brothers’ attention that four also is not a majority of either eight or nine. Surely the example posed by Judge Mansfield where only five judges in regular active service are available to vote on whether to order a rehearing en banc illustrates the inappropriateness of a simplistic “majority of those voting” criterion for Rule 35.