Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Stop the presses - rule on unpublished opinions gets by committee vote

Howard Bashman has this post updating the status of the proposed FRAP 32.1, of which I've tried to state my views, but I'm not sure whether I've done it yet.

Nobody would cite a federal case on a state law question if there is a state law case, nobody would cite an unpublished case where there is a published case, and no judge would be persuaded by an unpublished case that doesn't say anything. The niche for the use of unpublished cases is when there's nothing better to cite, and in those circumstances, what's the harm in being able to cite them, as Judge Turk might say, "for whatever it's worth"?

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