“A Recipe for District Judge Supremacy”
Today, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit granted a writ of mandamus in a death penalty case. In this case, the district court improperly exercised jurisdiction over a clearly moot case, and then refused to dismiss the case. Mandamus seems plainly warranted.
Judge Ho wrote a concurrence that speaks directly to controversies of the day:
Our dissenting colleague asks: What’s the rush? Even assuming that the district court erred, the dissent contends that there’s no need for immediate relief—just let things play out through “[t]he typical appellate process.” Post, at _ (Haynes, J., dissenting).
But that’s cold comfort to the millions of voters who took the time to participate in the democratic process, only to see their legitimate efforts unlawfully undone by a single district judge.
If a district judge abuses the legal process in a hurried effort to thwart the lawful political choices of the electorate, appellate courts are well within their right to intervene and grant emergency relief.
The Supreme Court did just that last week in Trump v. J.G.G., _ U.S. _ (2025). There (as here), a district court presumed to seize control over a case of profound public interest that it had no lawful business deciding, because it belonged in another court. So the Supreme Court intervened and took the case away fr
Article from Reason.com
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