I too am unconvinced. If the Court reverses a lower court, it says it was wrong for the lower court to have reached the merits. Treating a decision that wrongly reached the merits as BINDING seems fishy, at best. Guess I'll have to look up the lower court law on prudential reversals.
David B. Cruz Professor of Law University of Southern California Law School Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071 U.S.A. On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, A.E. Brownstein wrote: > The story is correct. The Supreme Court did not vacate the Ninth Circuit's > decision in Newdow. It reversed it. The District Judge in the new case > argues that a reversal on prudential standing grounds does not disturb the > merits of the Ninth Circuit decision as precedent. "In sum, because a court > may reach the merits despite a lack of prudential standing, it follows that > where an opinion is reversed on prudential standing grounds, the remaining > portion of the circuit court's decision binds the district courts below." > > I am unconvinced. > > Alan Brownstein > UC Davis _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
