Court Opinion

ID: 9449772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:22:09.679924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:58.553399
License: Public Domain

JONES, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
The scriptural lament that “Of making many books there is no end,” 1 might be revised to include judicial opinions. I think this Court might well follow the example of the Supreme Court in its undeviating practice of giving no indication regarding the grounds of its division where an appeal is decided by a divided court.2 It has been assumed by me that the purposes of a judicial opinion, unless it be in dissent, are to inform the losing litigant as to the reason why he has lost his case, and to set forth and publish the governing legal principles so that they might become precedents for future decisions. The use of judicial precedents and the application of the doctrine of stare decisis are characteristic of Anglo-American law which distinguishes it from Roman law.3 The use of precedents is older than the Year Books.4 I cannot see how the judges of this Court are contributing to the law’s development by writing opinions in this cause where their equal division has resulted in an affirmance. We have not here made a decision. We have not here established a precedent. It seems to me to be rather presumptuous to say or suggest to the Supreme Court, as I think is being done, that because we are divided it should take jurisdiction.

. Ecclesiastes 12:12.

. Rice v. Sioux City Memorial Park Cemetery, 349 U.S. 70, 73, 75 S.Ct. 614, 99 L.Ed. 897.

. Holdsworth, The Year Books, 2 Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, pp. 110 et seq.