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Notes -
Easy procedural decisions are the ones where a political court is least likely to make a political decision on the underlying merits - the cost of making the legally correct decision is usually low (because the litigant who goofed can often refile, and in any case it doesn't set a bad precedent on the merits) and the cost of making the politically correct decision is high (because it messes up the body of precedent on what should be an easy procedural question, which generates extra work for every judge in the jurisdiction). There is also the possibility that the procedural issue itself has partisan political implications - in fact it almost always does, with left-wing judges favouring civil plaintiffs and criminal defendants. And an appeals court deciding a procedural issue knows that the procedural precedent usually has more impact than the substance of the case at bar.
A good example from the other side is the mifepristone case - SCOTUS decided 9-0 on standing with Thomas' concurrence saying that the plaintiffs lost even harder on standing than the majority - even though Thomas and Alito at least would probably have sided with the plaintiffs on the merits.
This is also why Media Matters stand a better change than you might think of winning on appeal in the 5th circuit if Musk wins the "ads on Nazi posts" lawsuit at trial - the procedural precedent created by allowing an anti-free-speech lawsuit to go ahead in a forum-shopped jurisdiction is on balance a pro-left one and the Fedsoc judges who dominate the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals know this.
While all true, the other three Democratic judges in dissent prove that it's still very easy to just spike the procedural issue and vote your interest, anyway.
Judges often say things in dissent that they wouldn't dream of saying in a majority opinnion. You only have the freedom to throw bombs when there's no risk of actually making a mess of things.
Kind of like how Democrats never pushed for enshrining Roe until it was gone.
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