Court Opinion

ID: 9494863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:48:42.45107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:40.201070
License: Public Domain

SQUATRITO, District Judge,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur with the majority’s disposition of this appeal because the district court’s dismissal of Clanton’s 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion complied with the requirements of § 2255 and Barrett v. United States, 105 F.3d 793 (2d Cir.1996). I write separately to disagree, respectfully, with the suggestion that adopting a litigant’s entire memorandum of law and incorporating it by reference in a judicial ruling inhibits effective appellate review of that decision. See Majority Op., at 427-28.
The majority indicates that when a district judge adopts a litigant’s proffered legal analysis by way of a general endorsement, the appellate court is unable to distinguish between the arguments the district court adopted and those it rejected. Id. I believe that this concern flows from the assumption that a judge who adopts a litigant’s memorandum without specifying which of the arguments are meritorious intends to limit such adoption only to those arguments which will withstand appellate review. If that were the case, such a practice would hinder the appellate process by burdening the court of appeals with the responsibility of sifting through the briefs to decide “which of the proffered alternative grounds for decision the district court was adopting.” Id. When an endorsement refers to extrinsic arguments without specificity, however, the presumption should be that the district court did not intend to limit the arguments which it adopted.
It is the duty of the district court to specify the extent to which it is relying upon a litigant’s brief. Chief Judge Kor-man did this by identifying and incorporating only those arguments contained on pages 5-6 of the government’s letter-brief. If, however, the district court does not in some way limit such an endorsement, then it should be deemed to have incorporated all of the arguments contained in the referenced brief. It is of no consequence that some of the arguments may be incorrect. When a judge adopts a litigant’s memorandum of law, either in whole or in part, that judge is implicitly saying “I agree with what is written therein, and were I to elaborate on the rationale I employed in reaching this decision, I would reiterate the arguments contained in that memo.” Under these circumstances, then, I cannot agree with the proposition that the practice of relying on a litigant’s memorandum (or on a state court decision, as the district *430court did, in part, in Rudenko) invariably inhibits effective appellate review.
I do not mean to suggest that extrinsic legal analysis incorporated by reference into a court’s decision will always suffice to explain a district court’s rationale. There may be instances where the appellate court must remand for clarification because the referenced material is devoid of reasoning sufficient to allow for adequate appellate review. Those circumstances, however, do not warrant a blanket policy prohibiting the adoption of memoranda in their entirety when those memoranda do provide sufficient legal reasoning.
As for the argument that it is not sound judicial practice to adopt wholesale the memoranda of a litigant, lest the unsuccessful party feel deprived of judicial neutrality, I express no opinion on the matter. Given our disposition of this appeal, I believe any such statement would amount to unnecessary dicta. The issue before this panel is whether the procedure employed by the district court complies with the requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and Barrett v. United States. For the aforementioned reasons, I believe that it does.
In sum, insofar as a reader reasonably can ascertain the rationale employed by the district court in rendering a decision on an issue, I believe that all of the concerns articulated in the majority’s opinion and in Rudenko are assuaged. Here, the district court clearly referred all readers of its endorsement order to the reasoning found on pages 5-6 of the government’s memorandum, and the location of the order did not prejudice Clanton in any way. Therefore, I concur with the majority in affirming the judgment of the district court.