Legal Commentary

?Affirmed But Criticized.?

By Orin Kerr

I was reading some cases on Westlaw recently when I noticed a relatively new description in the West summary: ?Affirmed but criticized.? I came across it when reading Whitlock v. Brown, 596 F.3d 406 (7th Cir. 2010), for which West summarized the holding as follows:

Holdings: The Court of Appeals Sykes, Circuit Judge, held that:
(1) conservation officer?s self-serving deposition testimony was admissible on motion for summary judgment, and
(2) conservation officer was entitled to qualified immunity.
Affirmed but criticized.

A quick Westlaw search suggests that this has been used in West summaries in nine cases ? all since 2007 ? in which the appellate court agreed with the result of the trial court decision but disagreed as to the rationale.

I gather this will be of zero interest to readers who are not Westlaw nerds. But then I know there are a good number of Westlaw nerds among the readership, so this post is for them.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 07, 2011 (boomark / email).