In a recorded interview featured at a recent American Bar Association (ABA) event, Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman elaborated on her well-known inclination towards dissenting opinions. Speaking to Steven Caltrider, chair of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Law Section and chief IP counsel for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the suspended judge laid stress on the instructive role of dissenting views in legal matters.
“The dissent helps the student to understand the balance that the court decided to reach—what philosophy, what logic, what evidence they rejected as being not probative for whatever reason, and what was accepted,” the 96-year-old jurist elucidated. Without the dissent, she explicated, valuable insights not presented in a majority opinion would remain hidden.
However, Newman herself isn’t currently sitting on the bench. The Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit has suspended the judge from hearing new cases, following her refusal to comply with an order requiring her to undergo medical evaluations. The council declared last month that Newman’s noncompliance amounted to judicial misconduct, thus justifying her one-year suspension from service.
For more details about her perspective and the discussion at the ABA event, visit the original Law.com article.