Notables

Judge Wilkinson dissented here from the denial of rehearing en banc in the Virginia Republican primary case. He wrote: "At a minimum, courts should not use the American Constitution to weaken the centrist impulses in American politics. It should be clear that an open primary, where candidates must compete for votes beyond their party’s core adherents, is a permissible choice for a state to make. To use our unelected powers to foreclose this electoral option would prove the worst of self-inflicted wounds."

In Gilda v. U.S., the Federal Circuit dealt with the timeliness of the notice of appeal that was defectively e-filed on the last day. The lawyer in that case should be glad he is not in the federal court in California where the judge rejected the one day late-filed attorneys' fee petition in Toshiba America Information Systems v. New England Technology.

In the Seventh Circuit, Judge Easterbrook took on the lack of science behind the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet in this opinion: "Defendants might as well have said: 'Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.'"