Court Opinion

ID: 9494151
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:30:42.484747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:14.961074
License: Public Domain

RONALD M. GOULD, Circuit Judge,
with whom Circuit Judge BERZON joins
in Part II, concurring:
I.
I concur in Parts I, II, IIIA, IV and V of Judge Kozinski’s opinion. I join the holding that the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996), requires us to review de novo a district court’s curtilage decision, and that our earlier inconsistent cases are overruled.
II.
I respectfully decline to join Part IIIB. We have had no briefing, no argument, and no conference on the holding/dicta debate. For me, this debate itself is outside of Article III, which empowers us to decide cases and controversies. Here, we have a duty to decide the issues disputed between Johnson and the United States. The holding/dicta debate is interesting and might be beneficial in a law journal, which could recruit academics to comment further on the issues on which my eminent colleagues disagree. The debate might in*922form our judgment as a court and possibly lead to consideration of general orders or other rules about precedent to guide future panels consistent with their Article III duties. The debate stimulates thought on the nature of the judicial process: what we mean by precedent and what should be considered holding and dicta. However, in my view, the debate of the judges in this case over the binding effect of their decisions made here cannot bind a future panel which will have its own duty to assess whether a judicial statement is holding or dicta. Respectfully, debate over the future import of a decision is best left to the future when it is necessary to the decision of a case.