No good, says the Third Circuit.

I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you.

Okay, yeah, at first blush my sense of propriety and form is offended by the practice of stamping off on "proposed opinions."

Then again. . . I've seen federal judicial clerks take whole chunks of one side's memorandum of law in a summary judgement motion, tweak it a bit, and turn it into an opinion - So Ordered. Is there really that much of a difference?
How do we know that Judge Schwab's clerks did not provide him with thorough research and a recommendation, and the judge, honestly, believed that the "proposed opinion" was absolutely correct and perfect? If the real world result of this opinion is that the judge simply has his clerks rewrite the proposed opinion in the 'judge's own voice' - whatever that might be - then it will just be a waste of time and resources without any meaningful increase in fairness or justice.

Let's face it folks: ghostwriting is everywhere. PR flacks send copy to journalists who change a word or two and then hand it off to their editors as if it was their own real and true bylined work. Corporate executives routinely hire folks (such as yours truly) to write articles and whitepapers for them. And we all know that when you read a piece in the New York Law Journal by Mr. famous lawyer X, and in the tiny print at the bottom it says "Joe Shmuck, law clerk, assisted with the preparation of this article" it really means Joe Shmuck researched and wrote the piece.

I'm not defending Schwab. It appears, at least from the 3rd Circuit's view, that he signed off on an opinion he didn't even read very carefully, and in one instance apparently rules on arguments never made in the underlying motion. But we can all predict the final result of this: a new opinion, cosmetically different from the proposed opinion, but in substance identical.