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Civil Rights,
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

Oct. 13, 2011

Judge’s opinion on gay rights was inappropriate

9th Circuit Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain's opinion on gay and lesbian rights was unnecessary and wrong. By Erwin Chemerinsky of University of California, Irvine School of Law

Erwin Chemerinsky

Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law

Erwin's most recent book is "Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism." He is also the author of "Closing the Courthouse," (Yale University Press 2017).


For decades, conservatives have professed the need for courts to avoid judicial activism and practice judicial restraint. These phrases are never defined and it usually seems that "judicial activism" is simply a label for decisions that people don't like. However, if anything is judicial activism, surely it is a judge dismissing a case as moot, but nonetheless gratuitously expressing his views on its merits.


This is exactly what 9th Circuit Judge D...

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