Quote of the Day

[kate_nepveu]

"One person with a fantastic view may be suspected of delusions; two people with the identical view are just oddballs."
     —Judge Easterbrook, United States v. James, No. 02-3424, slip op. at 5-6 (7th Cir. May 14, 2003) [9 page PDF opinion]

Via the invaluable How Appealling.

[ Edited to add pincite. ]

Comments

[merhawk]

Oh. My.

Not what I was expecting to see when I clicked the link.

[kate_nepveu]

What were you expecting, out of curiosity?

[merhawk]

I'm not quite sure. Something more along the lines of a person who had fringe - but fairly defensible - beliefs. Not beliefs that make you wonder when they stopped taking their medication.

[kate_nepveu]

Oh, they reminded me of the tax avoidance people.

Yes, it's nuts, but it's so beautifully designed to be nuts in their favor that you just know there's rationality under there somewhere.

[annewashere.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I think I liked "I am Catholic and the Pope would not wear a miter."

Geez.

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah, when an appellate court goes out of its way to say, "No, we don't have to talk about this topic, but we're going to anyway," you can be pretty sure that the court was a bit taken aback by whatever they're going to talk about. My guess is that the trial judge had a bit of a patience problem by that point, but that's only a guess.

[redbird]

That's delightful. Thank you.

[kate_nepveu]

Judge Easterbrook can be relied upon to write clear, accessible, interesting decisions. So can Judges Posner and Evans of the same Circuit; I wonder if the 7th really has a higher proportion, or I just don't know of the other judges on different Circuits who are also excellent writers?