Making dissents personal?

Today's DJ has 9th Circuit Judge not afraid to name names in dissents that often turn personal: In two recent dissents in cases involving immigration and death penalty appeals, Judge Lawrence VanDyke fired away at Senior U.S. District Judge William A. Fletcher and on Friday, at now-deceased 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt. The article begins:

• 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lawrence VanDyke is becoming the master of the biting dissent. While the judge, an appointee of President Donald Trump who took office last year, almost always votes along with other conservatives on the circuit court, he is setting himself apart in dissents that often turn personal.
• Even by the standards of appellate court dissents, the language of VanDyke's dissents are "intemperate," said Arthur Hellman, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. "That's personalizing the criticism in a way most judges would not have done," Hellman added.

Speaking of 9th Cir. judges (and 2d District Justices, etc.), ABTL-LA is having an in-person judicial reception starting at 6 p.m. on September 22 at the Omni in DTLA. Register here.

Also of note, Beds starts out a statement of facts here like this: 

“Byzantine.” Such was the word chosen by one of the cross-appellants ... to describe this litigation. The choice was apt, considering the case took five years from filing to judgment and covered a course of alleged misconduct spanning decades. Mindful of the legal and factual morass with which we are presented, our goal is to isolate only those facts and issues which are relevant to resolving the appeals.

And the NLJ has Warren Burger’s Biography: Decades in the Making, and Still Not Done