Sunday, June 14, 2009

No winner in our Denedo contest

At the end of last year, we announced a CAAFlog contest to predict which justice would write the Court's Denedo opinion. Amazingly, even though there were 12 entries in the contest, none predicted Justice Kennedy.

4 comments:

Cossio said...

I am actually curious as to how the decision to write the opinion is made.

I would assume that the winning majority makes an agreement between themselves.

Having said that most of us knew it was going to be a split 5-4 vote in favor or Denedo (with a chance of it going the other way).

CJ Robert's decision as well as the other "Conservatives" on the bench was apparent.

And, once again, it came down to Justice Kennedy's swing vote.

I notice that Kennedy was a California National Guardsman in 1961, the same year he received his LL. B (from Harvard). It is also the same year he entered private practice as an attorney.

That is interesting, as I am curious to what job he had as a Guardsman. Apparently he only served a year. I was wondering out of curiosity if he could have been a JAG. Was that possible with a LL. B in the 60's ?

Anonymous said...

Justice Kennedy was not a judge advocate in the CNG, he was enlisted.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, enlisted with a LL B, interesting. I remember 5 years ago reading about an enlisted pararescueman with his JD. Apparently he didn't mind e-4 pay to o-3.

But of course the obvious question is how he terminate his enlistment after 1 year.

TC

Anonymous said...

Cossio:

The senior Justice in the majority chooses who will write the majority opinion. So for Denedo, Justice Stevens assigned it to Justice Kennedy.