Charles said
Are you sure they'll get the same panel?
To which the eminent MS legal scholar JFD responded
C T: Where have you been planet Uranus? SAme judges sit on Appeals Court They are appointed for life unless impeached.
Typical liberal you do not know squat about your government. But I will defer to the estimable Duke for the details of Court composition.JFD
I'll type this very s-l-o-w-l-y so even someone who believes MS "innovative legal defense" (they're innovating again!!) can follow.
There are 10 judges on the court of appeals. (10 is 1 more than 9).
There are 3 judges on a panel.
The 3 judges are randomly assigned.
3 is less than 10.
You can pick 3 judges (out of 10) a whole bunch of ways. You can construct 120 different panels.
The odds are 1 in 120 MS will get the same 3 judges.
This has got to be really tough for the pro-MS crowd. Sporkin rejected the original consent decree as toothless, said it would not change Microsoft's behavior, and they'd be back. Clearly, he is biased, bigoted, doesn't know the law, and had a poor grasp of the industry. So MS, with the DoJ's help (Gates had played golf with Clinton, and a few weeks later a the DoJ decided to accept a weak consent decree) went judge shopping, and got TPJ, a pro-business, Republican, Reagan appointee. Now it turns out that TPJ actually cares about the law!!! Horror of horrors!! It's time to go judge shopping again, but MS is running out of sympathetic judges. It must be that everyone is ganging up on them. It's obviously not that their innovative behavior is criminal.
-Russ |
