U.S. District Judge Franklin S. Van Antwerpen believes that federal trial judges should be allowed to write opinions that explain their rulings after an appeal is filed — as state court trial judges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey do — so that appellate judges won’t be forced to guess or remand the case for t-crossing and i-dotting.
In an article published in the current volume of the Cardozo Law Review, Van Antwerpen and two of his former clerks, Jason H. Miller and Adam J. Wasserman, argue that a simple rule change — modeled on the Pennsylvania and New Jersey rules — would significantly reduce the workload of federal appellate judges.
