Man Without Qualities

Posted 9:57 AM by Robert

Davis Descending LIII: Ninth Circuit Randomness?

Ninth Circuit decisions are sometimes criticized for being so inconsistent as to approach randomness.

But Jim Miller points out that sometimes the problem can be the possibility that there wasn't enough randomness at that court.

UPDATE:

An astute, probabilistically inclined reader writes:

There are 27 members of the Court. You have assumed that each member will either overturn (Y) or uphold (N) the decision, i.e. there is no probabilistic decisionmaking here. To know the probabilities, we must guess how the remaining 13 unpicked members would have decided. The following table gives the probabilities for each possible value (I hope it's readable):

N...............Y................Prob(3Y)................Prob(11N!3Y)................Net.......................One out of

11.............16.............0.191453................4.00618E-07............7.66995E-08............13037895

12.............15.............0.155556................4.80741E-06............7.4782E-07..............1337220

13.............14.............0.124444................3.12482E-05............3.88866E-06............257157.7

14.............13.............0.097778................0.000145825...........1.42584E-05............70133.92

15.............12.............0.075214................0.000546843...........4.11301E-05............24313.09

16.............11.............0.05641..................0.001749899...........9.87123E-05............10130.45

17.............10.............0.041026................0.004958047...........0.000203407...........4916.25

18.............9.............0.028718..................0.012749264...........0.000366133............2731.25

19.............8.............0.019145.................0.030279503...........0.00057971..............1725

20.............7..............0.011966................0.067287785...........0.000805153...........1242

21.............6..............0.006838................0.141304348...........0.000966184...........1035

22.............5..............0.003419................0.282608696...........0.000966184............1035

23.............4.............0.001368................0.541666667..........0.000740741............1350

24.............3.............0.000342....................1.........................0.00034188...............2925

Thus, if the three judges chosen were the only ones who would have halted the election, the odds against them being in the first round are 2925 to 1.

Somewhat more likely is that there were 5 or 6 total who would have postponed: down to about one thousand to one. As the number who would have overturned the decision rises, the probabilities get less likely because it is so unlikely to find a unanimous panel on the other side. Hope this helps.

Sounds like somebody - perhaps somebody in the Justice Department - should be asking some pointed questions of the Ninth Circuit.