Court Opinion

ID: 9461229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:09:06.521218+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:57.313852
License: Public Domain

LAY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in Judge Vogel’s well-analyzed opinion. Nonetheless I am troubled enough to comment on a collateral matter. Shortly before the scheduled argument in this case, the parties by and through their respective counsel stipulated to waive oral, argument. No reasons were given. When lawyers agree to waive appellate argument, my initial thoughts are that (a) one party (generally the appellant) must feel there is little merit to the appeal, and (b) both counsel must feel that oral argument before the appellate court is not very meaningful. The latter rationalization surely misses its mark.
This is not an ordinary case. It presents complex legal issues, with subtle and difficult questions. The issues relate to a narrow area of the law, unfamiliar terrain to some judges, like myself, in which we look forward to the aid and expertise of experienced counsel at oral argument. If the result here is in error (judges are fallible human beings), the lawyers and the parties may attribute it to our inability to totally perceive the significance of portions of the written record or to fully comprehend the law briefed. Many judges listen better than they read — at least I do. When oral argument is waived, the parties lose their only real opportunity to excite the minds and sharpen the legal reasoning of at least the two judges who will not undertake the same in-depth analysis and research as the judge who drafts the opinion. Waiving the opportunity for oral argument, in my judgment, is advocacy at its poorest level.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter once said: “Every case worthy of an appeal is worthy of an argument.” Sometimes when the case is patently not worthy of an appeal, this court will screen the case for “no argument.” We do this not to save time for the court (oral argument takes little time for judges) but because the court feels the issue does not merit oral argument. But the converse is generally true when, as here, the court sets the case on the argument calendar. Karl Llewellyn has observed:
The brief can develop the frame; but the oral argument must get the case set into the desired frame, and for keeps. I do not see how so delicate a task can responsibly be left to paper when an accepted institutional pattern offers a way of dealing with the tribunal face to face.
K. Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals 240 (1960).1
We need to strive for excellence on appeal as well as in trial.

. Arthur T. Vanderbilt once reflected:
The argument of an appeal is the climax of a case. . . . You face a select audience that is experienced, professionally critical but not unfriendly, and keenly interested in knowing the facts and applying the law to them and more or less prepared for the occasion. The challenge is great; the entire outcome of the case, victory or defeat, will be influenced by the effectiveness of your oral argument.
A. Vanderbilt, Forensic Persuasion, The 1950 John Randolph Tucker Memorial Lectures at Washington and Lee University 14-15 (1950).