Years ago, when I was in college, one of my professors noted a theory that you could get a better idea of how a judge was going to rule on any given matter before his court, not by researching his legal philosophy, but by determining what he had for breakfast that morning.
I can’t source this, but allegedly there was a case in state court somewhere in the western half of the U.S. where a rancher was suing to overturn a law, authored by a legislator named Kellogg. The argument was that the bill was incomprehensibly drafted and that the state department of agriculture therefore couldn’t come up with sensible regulations applying the grazing restrictions said to be required by the law. As a result, in effect all grazing permits issued for state-owned rangeland had to be canceled—thus giving the petitioner his cause for suing.
The judge’s ruling may have offered a clue as to what he had for breakfast that morning:
