Thursday, April 02, 2020

Life during wartime

As I posted on Facebook, my first experience with the courts acting under the initial version of the Supreme Court's emergency order, that has since been renewed, was somewhat confusing. One judge took the position that he lacks "jurisdiction" to have any hearings by telephone or make any rulings except in the enumerated categories of essential cases. Another judge had a telephone conference and made a bunch of rulings and entered a new final order in a different case. Both views on the power of the circuit courts cannot be right. If the second view is wrong, then I suspect that we will spend some years to come relitigating the consequences.