This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 23rd, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It can be maddening to be a federal judge compelled to apply wrong-headed Supreme Court

precedent in one particular case recently in the to apply wrong-headed Supreme Court precedent.

In one particular case recently in the DC Circuit,

Economic Liberty butted heads and lost again to rational basis review.

Roger Pillan, Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute, explains.

This case was decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and as such as a lower court, it has to abide

by Supreme Court precedents.

And so what we had was a decision that was unanimous by the three-judge panel that followed Supreme Court

precedent, but it led to a concurrence by Judge Janice Rogers Brown that was a ringing condemnation of those precedence.

And I'm going to quote from some of that language because it is something that we don't

hear very often.

Janice Rogers Brown joined the DC Circuit Court

from the California Supreme Court.

She was an appointee of George W Bush back in 2005 and she was

something of a controversial nominee because she had a record on the California Supreme Court of taking

very libertarian positions with respect to the law.

And she hasn't disappointed in this case.

The case is called Heinhating the U.S. of A.

And it deals with very factual situations that every American would identify with.

Mr. Hetinger came to the United States after World War II and he began as a hired hand on a dairy ranch.

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