Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke has drawn sharp criticism after filing a dissent that urged the Supreme Court to summarily reverse his own court’s Second Amendment rulings.
The dissent came in the case of Knife Rights, Inc. v. Bonta, following the Ninth Circuit’s denial of rehearing en banc.
VanDyke, widely regarded as the court’s most vocal defender of gun rights, excoriated his colleagues’ Second Amendment jurisprudence in unusually aggressive terms.
His proposal was remarkable in its framing: the Supreme Court should intervene not purely on doctrinal grounds, but because his colleagues would find it humiliating.
VanDyke apparently argued that humiliation is the only currency his fellow judges still accept, a characterisation that raised eyebrows far beyond the legal press.
The dissent drew immediate comparisons to an earlier VanDyke opinion from March, in which he opened a trans discrimination case dissent with the sentence “This is a case about swinging dicks.”
In that same March dissent, VanDyke referred to his colleagues as “woke judges” who were “complicit” in harming women and girls.
Critics noted that a separate dissent in the Knife Rights case had already been written by Judge Tung, spanning seventeen pages and joined by VanDyke himself, among others.
That dissent was written in the measured register typical of judicial opinions, and was joined by a bench full of conservatives who completed the exercise without a single outburst.
VanDyke’s additional 27 pages were described as adding nothing substantive to the legal argument, with the separate writing said to exist only as a vehicle for particularly vicious language.
Legal commentators noted that the term “benchslap” is well-suited to a legal gossip blog, but that judicial opinions are supposed to operate under standards of decorum and professionalism.
The pattern of provocative language across multiple opinions has prompted broader questions about the boundaries of acceptable conduct on the federal bench.
VanDyke’s dissents have attracted significant attention both for their substance and for the tone that sharply departs from conventional judicial writing.
Whether the Supreme Court will respond to VanDyke’s unusual invitation to publicly embarrass his Ninth Circuit colleagues remains to be seen.