"Court of Appeals Dynamics in the Aftermath of a Supreme Court Ruling".

How does a U.S. court of appeals deal with a Supreme Court intervention into its ongoing work? A law-changing ruling affects not only the immediate parties but also many factually similar or related cases, and the affected court must cope with the situation. Mandates in recently-decided cases may have to be recalled and outcomes altered or cases remanded for further proceedings, and these effects expand if the justices then GVR other cases. The affected court will also incorporate the ruling into its new decisions and may choose one or more of many cases as vehicles to decide open questions. With multiple panels facing the same or similar issues, the court may act en banc to avoid inconsistent results. During this time, the Supreme Court may decide other cases posing follow-on questions, with the lower court perhaps suspending action until the justices have ruled. All of this makes interaction between the court of appeals and the Supreme Court quite dynamic. Using documents from casefiles in the papers of a senior U.S. court of appeals judge, the paper examines such dynamic interaction in the aftermath of Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266 (1973) (warrantless search by roving patrol away from the border not statutorilyauthorized border search and is Fourth Amendment violation), as that ruling affected many recently-decided or pending appeals from criminal convictions stemming from searches of varying degrees of intrusiveness, at or near the border, at fixed (permanent or temporary) checkpoints or by roving patrols. The Ninth Circuit not only had to cope with fast-developing Fourth Amendment law but it also faced how to apply the uncertain law of retroactivity to convictions on appeal when Almeida-Sanchez was decided. In addition to the story that is told here, various elements of interaction between the court of appeals and the Supreme Court are specified. Especially important is that the court of appeals, in anticipatory deference, held cases for Supreme Court decisions so the court of appeals could then attempt to fall in line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]