In the interests of pushing my most recent post further down the page, I'll add my responses to Angus Dwyer here, rather than as an update to my last post. To recap, he proposed switching from geographic circuit courts to subject-matter courts, I dissented, and he has now updated his post to respond to my criticisms.

In some of his replies I think Angus gets the better of me, so I will concede some of my points-- the transaction costs of travelling to Chicago to litigate all of one's appellate securities claims, &c. will probably not be prohibitive if this is a worthwhile system, and would just lead to relocation of specialist firms. I'm glad he decides to keep the district courts as they are (as the transaction costs and the multiple-claim/pro-se problem would be prohibitive there).

So now we have a system where district court law remains as it is, but when a district judge reaches a decision, he faxes off a section of his decision and all of the record to a number of different circuits, each of which is in charge of reviewing a section of the record. Presumably all decisions will also have to be sent off to the Constitutional Court (will there be only one?) to make sure that the statutes, actions, etc. involved are constitutional.

The game before the house, then, is to come up with hypotheticals, especially hypotheticals that we think could be frequent, where multiple claims (that would go to different subject-matter circuits) will entangle in ways likely to contradict one another, with extra points if the entanglement can be made entirely non-constitutional, and thus lead to a one-case circuit-split nightmare. I'm not feeling terribly creative at the moment, but I'm sure these exist, as there is an awful lot of federal law out there, and great potential for claims and counter-claims. The comments are open to creative legal minds.

I am also not conceding the points about capture or transition costs, but they are less interesting to negotiate here.

I was tempted not to blog this one-- a trashy, meaningless, one-off fling I managed without leaving the bookstore-- but apparently the 50 Book Challenge operates under a rule of full-disclosure. That said, I have little else to say about Chloe Does Yale, the not-very-long, not-very-interesting, not-very-fictional tale of a Yale sex columnist, written by ex-Yale sex columnist Natalie Krinsky. If one had taken the surplus 200 pages from Jenna Jameson's memoir and padded them with 40 pages of cursory exposition of Yale landmarks, you would have this book.

[50 Book Challenge]

Boeing's CEO was asked to resign today for having an affair with a female executive in violation of company policy. The interesting aspect of the decision, which I guess we'll hear more about soon, is that Stonecipher was found out through an anonymous tip to the company's ethics committee.

There have been some questions about whether the anonymous whistle-blower rules of Sarbanes-Oxley (Sections 301 & 806) would have been effective in stopping WorldCom or Enron type fraud. While I'm suspicious of SOX generally, whether or not the particular anonymity system at Boeing was adopted in response to federal legislation, it seems to have worked here. An interesting piece of evidence, at any rate.

Angus Dwyer suggests rearranging the circuit courts so that they handle cases by subject-matter rather than geographic region. I don't know how seriously he intends the proposal, but I'm skeptical. Here's why:

1-- Transition Costs. This speaks for itself.

2-- Transaction Costs. Presumably each of these courts would have to have nationwide jurisdiction and have to hear arguments in a number of locations, or else make the costs of appellate review even more prohibitive for those from far away. With e-mail, this could be handled more easily than before, but it's going to involve an awful lot of flying to and fro to hear arguments from Sacramento to New York to Nome. C.f. The Ninth Circuit.

3-- District Courts. Does Mr. Dwyer want district courts to be similarly segregated? If so, the transaction costs problem is even more massive-- the average litigant will be much farther from the relevant subject-matter district court, and the pro se litigant may have a lot of trouble figuring out where he's even supposed to file his complaint. If not, it will be harder for appellate courts to police their district judges, and the ignorance Mr. Dwyer fears will merely be shoved down a level.

4-- Multiple Claims. Pity the poor pro se litigant who doesn't know what his legal claim is. Pity also somebody who has multiple claims-- that a particular style of punishment violates RLIUPA, the Free Exercise Clause, local tort law, the substantive due process provisions of the 14th Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment, for example.

5-- Interrelated law. I imagine there would also be a lot of distortion introduced when one area of law impinged on another. A tort claim for libel (reaching the court under diversity jurisdiction) may also have First Amendment impact. If the federal tort court gives a ruling that creates First Amendment problems (because it doesn't know or care enough about the free speech law) we have to have either another federal appeal, or live with even worse distortion than we have now.

6-- Capture. I am also surprised that Mr. Dwyer, as a conservative, isn't concerned about a technocratic judiciary (this is what we would have). Not only is there the risk of non-virtuous judges (this risk arises under all judicial systems) but there is the very human tendency to assume that one's area of legal specialization is, and should be, important and complicated. To be sure, there will be much complexity in our legal system but it is on the whole better to keep things simple where possible, not to create a federal bureaucracy with a vested interest in keeping things a doctrinal thicket.

UPDATE: A reader points out that we'd also lose the benefit of seeing different law in different circuits. A good point. Perhaps this would be balanced out by the supposedly-better results that so-called experts would reach, but I am not so sure.

UPDATE: More here.

There's been a lot of discussion this week about a National Law Journal article alleging that "Gen Y" lawyers lack loyalty, have a sense of entitlement, and have "flabby" work ethics. I'm writing something about this for the Harvard Law Record, but I thought I'd contribute to the public debate with this excerpt, drawn from a letter a young associate received from his father-in-law early in the 20th century. The inexperienced lawyer was faced with a choice between two rival law firms looking to lure him away from his current job, and he was confused. His father's answer is instructive:

"At the start, you want to throw aside all regard for the interests of Z.B. & M and G. & W. The action of both is governed by purely selfish business considerations, the only consideration which should enter into a purely business proposition. There is just one person you should think about and whose interest you should seek most intelligently and persistently to promote, and that person is [you]."

Who was the lawyer? Oh, just Learned Hand, the greatest appellate judge of the last century. And yes, he listened to his elder's advice.

So much for Gen Y, I think.