The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit unlawfully pick their cases for full opinions, and boy do they pick...

I wrote a lot on this blog about courts, state and federal, exercising "discretion" (discrimination among cases) that they do not have by law.

That the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit routinely, as a matter of policy, discriminates against civil rights appellants by putting their cases on a "fast-and-sloppy" track for non-precedential "summary orders", for negligent non-review by old judges who rubber stamp the lower court's decisions - whatever they are - by rubber-stamped phrases:

• "we assume parties' familiarity with procedural history of the case", and
• "we affirm on substantially the same grounds as the well-reasoned and thoughtful decision of the district court".

That is happening in the 2nd Circuit despite the fact that there is no distinction in statutory law allowing the 2nd Circuit to "pick" cases for full opinions (that require much more work) as opposed to summary orders that require no work at all.

And, the 2nd Circuit charges litigants who are provided with an "opinion" the same fee as litigants slapped with "summary orders" - so the "summary order" litigants, most of them civil rights appellants, are forced by the 2nd Circuit to finance the "opinion" litigants.

That discrimination being bad enough, look at what cases the 2nd Circuit gets to "pick" for a full opinion while tossing civil rights cases:

1) a civil rights case of an out-of-state attorney licensed in New York - but only in order to restore discrimination against out-of state attorneys in order to protect business of in-state attorneys in New York;

the two judges who did that are themselves "resident" attorneys licensed in New York (I will run a separate blog about that, there are interesting issues regarding these judges' attorney registrations in New York), so the personal interest is apparent; and

in view of the fact that a federal judge, even though appointed for life, can CHOOSE at any time to leave the bench and go practice law - 

as, for example, Judge Shira Scheindlin of SDNY is going to do this week - 

it is pointless to make a claim that federal judges are not prone to decisions based on self-interest when they make discriminatory and turf-protective rulings about the legal profession.

2) The case of Tom Brady - it was really important for the 2nd Circuit (as opposed to civil rights appeal) to restore a suspension of a NFL player, really really important for the court to throw extensive resources on reviewing and resolving that case, all civil rights appellants be damned with their rubber stamped one-two page "summary orders" issued by octogenarian judges who never read the record.

Not only the 2nd Circuit "picks" cases for their opinions - but it picks it in a blatant self-serving manner, and only to either serve the judges' own personal interest or to gain publicity in a scandalous sport-related case.

A lot of justice there.