Norwood v. Vance, decided by the Ninth Circuit last Thursday and noted in Friday's Blog Scan, is a prisoner suit involving denial of outdoor exercise. The trial judge denied a jury instruction regarding deference to prison officials because "deference" was not defined. The panel majority (Kozinski, Callahan), noted that the word "deference" is a common English word, not Urdu or Klingon. The dissent (Thomas) disagreed with the holding but further noted that there is no Klingon word for "deference."

I have often wondered why many federal judges have such difficulty with the "deference" standard of AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), desperately clinging on to the 1953-1996 de novo review standard. See, e.g., our prior posts on Irons v. Carey, here and here. Maybe this helps explain it.

Serial hat tips to Eugene Volokh and VC commenter Dave N.