Standards of review Forum

[gmail]

Is this taught at some point in law school? I must have missed that class. If anyone has advice on resources for getting a handle on your jxn's standards of review, other than combing through opinions, it'd be much appreciated.

Just to clarify, i'm talking about standards of appellate review, ideally w/r/t trial procedure-- i/e/ de novo, clear error, abuse of discretion.

[JusticeJackson]

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[Emma.]

CA9 specific, but this'll give you the lay of the land and it's likely your jurisdiction will have cases saying similar things.

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/content/vie ... 0000000368

[BVest]

Texas: 42 St. Mary's L.J. 3

By the way, standards of review are not necessarily static.

[bruinfan10]

yeah it's not the same answer for every circuit. the general categories are the same, but caselaw can tweak applications in meaningful ways. you're not going to get meaningful info from a law school class on this, you need to do your homework and make sure you nail it in each particular case before you. pretty fundamental point.....

[gmail]

ah ok, pretty sure no one in my jxn has attempted to sum up the appellate standards of review. just have to read 1000000000000s of cases

[rpupkin]

ah ok, pretty sure no one in my jxn has attempted to sum up the appellate standards of review. just have to read 1000000000000s of cases

No, you likely just have to read a few cases. As someone else mentioned, parties usually state the standard of review in their briefs. Check the cited authority like you would do for anything that a party cites that matters.

[bruinfan10]

ah ok, pretty sure no one in my jxn has attempted to sum up the appellate standards of review. just have to read 1000000000000s of cases

No, you likely just have to read a few cases. As someone else mentioned, parties usually state the standard of review in their briefs. Check the cited authority like you would do for anything that a party cites that matters.

100% agree. also, i should clarify that i wasn't saying applying the relevant standard of review correctly is particularly hard, it's just not something that a survey law school class can teach you. different circuits can call different things "mixed questions of law and fact," different circuits have different rules for when plain error applies, etc. I've jumped between workng in the sixth, eighth, and ninth circuits, and there's no one treatise that answers your question in the abstract (maybe an ALR cumulative supplement, but yeah, just cite check the relevant sections of the briefing and maybe click around on westlaw yourself a little bit---it's not rocket science but it's important not to screw it up---i imagine someone on your panel will catch an error on SoR quickly, but you'll look dumb if that happens and your judge won't love it).