Exploring the Myths About the Ninth Circuit

There is a perception held by many politicians, legal commentators, and journalists that the country’s largest court of appeals is a bastion of liberalism run amok. This Essay suggests that the statistical evidence in Scott’s article proves relatively little about the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit, because the quantitative questions are only a starting point and must be combined with qualitative analysis to shed any real light on the controversy. This Essay suggests that the Ninth Circuit suffers less from a genuine runaway tendency toward renegade judicial decisionmaking and more from a bandwagon effect of political criticism perpetuated by media commentary.