Court Opinion

ID: 9458920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:05:18.446995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:56.383784
License: Public Domain

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge
(with whom Circuit Judges IRVING R. KAUFMAN and MULLIGAN concur):
I concur in the views expressed by Judge Kaufman.
The time may well have come for a Congressional review of Title 28 U.S.C. § 46(c) which governs en banc procedure in federal courts of appeal, because of its apparent inconsistency in declaring, on the one hand, that a senior judge who heard an appeal as a panel member may not participate in ordering it to be heard en banc but, on the other, that he may participate in an en banc reconsideration ordered by a vote of the “majority of the circuit judges of the circuit who are in regular active service.” However, the dissent, by suggesting that the majority requirement can have an unfortunate or unfair impact in cases where less than the court’s full complement of judges is available to vote misconceives the purpose of the statute and of Rule 35(a) enacted pursuant to it. In my view if the dissent’s views were adopted, the objective of en banc procedure would be threatened.
The goal of § 46(c) and of Rule 35(a) is to achieve intracircuit uniformity by assuring that where questions of exceptional importance are presented the law of the circuit will be established by the vote of a majority of the full court rather than by a three-judge panel. H.R. Rep.No.1246, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. (1941); Hearings on S. 1053; before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. 14-16 (1941). The judges voting in favor of en banc in this case mistakenly describe themselves as representing “the will of a majority of the Court”. (Fn. 1). Actually they represent less than a majority. The issue here is whether four judges of a court with1' a nine-judge complement may force an en banc reconsideration that could result in the law of the circuit being determined by less than a majority of the court. If less than a majority could determine the law of the circuit, the purpose of en banc procedure would be eroded. Carried to its logical extreme it would mean that in a case where only five members of a nine-member court were available (either because of vacancies, disqualifications, illnesses or the like) the law of the circuit would be determined by the vote of only three. It was just to avoid such a possibility that Congress provided that a vote of a majority of the court’s full complement should be required. The majority requirement serves the further salutary purpose of limiting en banc hearings to questions of exceptional importance rather than allow the court to drift into the unfortunate habit of requiring such hearings in every case where a minority of the court may desire a decision by the full court. At a time when the judicial work load of most courts of appeal is at an unprecedented high, sittings en banc should continue to remain the exception.
There is nothing unfair about the majority requirement, either generally or in this case. In cases of exceptional importance, or where there is a conflict between circuits, it may be expected that the Supreme Court will grant certiorari and settle the questions in issue. For this reason this Circuit for many years did not hear appeals en banc, see Lopin-sky v. Hertz Drive-Ur-Self Systems, 194 F.2d 422, 429 (2d Cir. 1951) (concurring opinion of Judge Clark), preferring to adhere to panel decisions, at least where recent. See Schick, Learned Hand’s Court, Johns Hopkins Press (1970) pp. 105, 115-120. As for the present case, as Judge Kaufman has observed, the ironic feature is that if the two senior judges who joined in the majority opinion were permitted a voice on the issue, it may reasonably be inferred that they would vote against hearing the appeal en banc.