If you’re interested in some engaging opinion-writing, check out the majority and dissenting opinions in United States v. Cruz, a criminal case on whether the jury had sufficient evidence to conclude that the defendant was an “Indian” for the purposes of a federal criminal statute. Judge Reinhardt (joined by Judge Thomas) concludes that it was plain error to conclude that there was sufficient evidence, and thus the verdict must be overturrned. Judge Kozinski blows a gasket in dissent, ending with this paragraph:
The majority engages in vigorous verbal callisthenics to reach a wholly counter-intuitive—and wrong—result. Along the way, it mucks up several already complex areas of the law and does grave injury to our plain error standard of review. I hasten to run in the other direction.
Judge Kozinski’s dissent is classic Kozinski, although if a few of the lines had been left as a VC comment, I would have deleted it and warned commenter “EZRider” to be civil or not comment at all. (“Worse still, after huffing and puffing for 11 hefty paragraphs and 12 chubby footnotes. . . ” Sheesh.)
Thanks to How Appealing for the link.