The Facts of Life about Judicial Opinions -- Cyberworld

The Facts of Life about Judicial Opinions

On April 12, 2010, The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a decision in Cyberworld Enterprise Technologies, Inc. d/b/a Tekstrom, Inc. v. Napolitano, No. 09-2515, holding that an unambiguous statutory mandate that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) must bring a matter against an employer of H-1B nonimmigrants within thirty (30) days would not be recognized and applied, and that the DOL could bring its action eighteen (18) months after the statutorily mandated time had expired. The case was ably argued by a prominent immigration lawyer, Ronald Klasko, but sometimes having a good case and a good lawyer apparently isn’t enough to win the day.

The immigration case law is full of cases in which employers and aliens had their cases dismissed by courts for lack of jurisdiction as a result of missing a deadline by one day, or as a result of the rigid application some other bright line test. So, what gives? Is it a matter of whose ox is being gored? Whatever happened to “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?”

Well, Virginia, it’s time to understand that “The Law” doesn’t work the same for everybody, at least not in the Third Circuit in deciding this case. The Cyberworld decision demonstrates what I call the “Facts of Life about Judicial Opinions.”

Forget what they taught us in Civics class, or even in law school, about the grand notion that “We are a Nation of Laws, Not of Men." For, as it turns out, Judges are mere mortals, men and women, and the power that they have is not always used in the pursuit of fairness or consistency.

Here are the Facts of Life: Whether a case is constitutional or statutory, emotional or bland, important or not, Judges do not strictly follow a single guiding light of reason, precedent, fairness or any other single overarching value. Judges, with varying degrees of integrity, impartiality and scholarship, simply decide how they want the case to come out. The Judges may decide the case to achieve an outcome for the particular litigants before the court, or they may care more about future cases of the same sort, and intend to set a precedent.

But, in the end, the Judges decide what they want to do and then craft an opinion which supports, or purports to support, the desired outcome. If the lawyers briefed the right issues, and did so competently, the Court's opinion can simply track the reasoning and language of the winning side, and do so with the authority of the court behind it and making it 'the law.'"

The day a lawyer loses his or her virginity is the day he or she comes to understand that, underneath the myths, and all the bluster about “activist judges,” “strict constructionists," and so forth, a judicial decision is nothing more than a legal brief , except that it has been signed by the Judges, and when it becomes final, it has the added power of enforcement, right or wrong, fair or not.