On Fri, 28 Nov 2008, Alex Smith wrote: > Probably the slipping power of AFFIRM is a symptom, rather than the > problem itself; people are scared of AFFIRM because it makes a judgement > unappealable, and nobody, not the original judge, not the appeals panel, > has really bothered to look at the situation properly... Another symptom > of this is that new arguments keep coming up well after the original > judgement, often, where really they should have been considered earlier.
The unappealable thing hasn't changed, I think it was "always" that way, so it's just attitudes somehow, don't know why. I have noticed Callers tend to put much less effort into arguments than they used to, and original judges aren't willing to judge "UNDETERMINED - lack of caller effort" as much. I wonder if the return of DISMISS would help. Don't know why the fear of Affirm is there either. Even an "unappealable" judgement can be effectively overturned by a new case if anything new comes up - precedent is something but not everything. -G.
