Court Opinion

ID: 9492364
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:39:33.203548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:16.418071
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I concur in Judge Clay’s resolution of the issues properly before us in this appeal, as discussed in Parts I, II-D, and III of his opinion, I cannot sign his lengthy opinion because most of it addresses a matter that is not before us.
All of Part II of my brother’s opinion, save the final paragraph, is a gratuitous and inappropriate attack upon a prior decision of this court, United States v. Ovalle, 136 F.3d 1092 (6th Cir.1998), the merits of which have nothing to do with the issues before us. Judge Clay’s polemic, and his criticism of the federal judges of the Eastern District of Michigan, might have a proper place in some academic journal, or Op-Ed page, or perhaps as subject matter for discussion at a bench/bar conference such as the annual Judicial Conference of the Sixth Circuit, but it is totally out of place in an opinion deciding this case.
In my judgment, my brother’s criticism of Ovalle is an embarrassing imposition upon this court, not because of Judge Clay’s personal views about the Ovalle decision — he is entitled to them — but because of the place he has chosen to express them. The taxpayers and the tens of thousands of lawyers who must pay for our ever-lengthening published opinions should not be required to subsidize my brother’s essay attacking a precedently binding decision of this court whose issues and deci-sional rule have nothing to do with the case before us.