Benchslaps

Sixth Circuit Shows How You Bluebook ‘Basic Logic’ In Benchslap

Sometimes a simple citation is embarrassing enough.

As an aside, we find inexplicable the district court’s contradictory holdings across its opinions regarding the requisite standard of certitude for expert testimony…. As a matter of logic, Dr. Laboy’s opinion cannot be inadmissible for failing to meet the standard one moment, and then still inadmissible for meeting that same standard the next. See Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.3 (1005b19-20) (“It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect.”)

— Judge Richard Suhrheinrich, laying down a snarky benchslap of Judge S. Thomas Anderson of the Western District of Tennessee by dropping a little Aristotle on him in a footnote. Most folks would just let the discourse speak for itself and reveal the contradiction, but they are federal judges, after all — they’re a couple of generations removed from Socratic method.

Philosophy jokes! Anyway, the full opinion is available on the next page…

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