Court Opinion

ID: 9450047
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:33:30.151926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:07.616091
License: Public Domain

WASHINGTON, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
Mrs. Jones has left the hospital, and the order of September 17th has expired by its own terms. Under these circumstances, we are in my view precluded from passing on the merits of the questions presented, and hence from holding a rehearing en banc.
Our denial of a petition for rehearing en banc, in this as in all other instances, is not necessarily to be taken as approving the action of a panel or a judge in the matter sought to be reheard. Each judge exercises his own discretion in voting on whether a rehearing should be had, under the circumstances presented. He may or may not agree with the action taken by the panel or a judge. He may think that the merits should not be reached, for a variety of reasons. The question before tíim is whether the full court should act.1 Some of the factors to be considered were listed by the late *1011Chief Judge Stephens in an article published several years ago, pointing out that the power to grant hearings by the full court has been “sparingly exercised,” and has not been treated as “constituting the court in banc a general court of appeals” from a decision of a panel. Stephens, Shop Talk Concerning the Business of the Court, 20 JOURNAL OF THE D. C. BAR ASSOCIATION, 103 at 109 (1953). The same is true of actions taken by a single judge. My own reason for voting for denial of rehearing here has been stated in the preceding paragraph.
DANAHER, Circuit Judge, would dismiss for lack of a case or controversy.

. The Supreme Court, which exercises somewhat similar discretionary authority in deciding whether to grant or deny eer-tiorari, has “rigorously insisted that such a denial carries with it no implication whatever regarding the Court’s views on *1011the merits of a case which it has declined to review.” Maryland v. Baltimore Radio Show, 338 U.S. 912, 919, 70 S.Ct. 252, 255, 94 L.Ed. 562 (Opinion of Frankfurter, J.). ,