Judge Orrick's court is a trial court and it follows the precedents of the 9th Circuit and the Supreme Court. He is not on equal footing of a 9th Circuit judge, in fact his court is inferior to the 9th Circuit, if Orrick has made a mistake of law then the government can count on winning an appeal should it choose to file one.

Jonah Gelbach

Categorized in : Politics

While the 9th Circuit does seem to consistently have a high reversal rate at the Supreme Court, this is a questionable measure of the 9th Circuit's performance, the Supreme Court hears only a tiny fraction of those cases, maybe a dozen or two, so reversals tell us close to nothing about a circuit's performance except in a handful of cases.