Stephanie Dawkins Davis
How Judge Davis decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
Textualist statutory interpretation anchored in the rule against surplusage and ordinary public meaning at the time of enactment -- she will reconstruct a term's 1984 meaning from period dictionaries, expert testimony, legislative history, and contemporaneous agency interpretation rather than its modern technical usage.
“Our analysis begins, as it must, with the text of the statutes. ... the district court appropriately concluded that 'geometric isomers' must mean something and accurately observed that adopting Wilkes's position would render the statutory term a nullity.”
Federal-state comity / judicial restraint -- after the federal claims fall out, she favors leaving novel or complex questions of a state's constitution to that state's courts to decide in the first instance, rather than predicting unsettled state law.
“concerns around federal-state comity counsel that we abstain from needlessly intruding into significant state matters, such as the interpretation in the first instance of unique provisions of the state's constitution.”
Procedural preferences
Decides on the narrowest dispositive ground and writes deliberately narrow holdings -- in Williams she resolved the appeal on supplemental jurisdiction without reaching the merits of the state-constitutional claim, and expressly cabined the opinion to its facts.
“district courts should not read this opinion to restrict their broad discretion to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, as our holding here is narrowly tailored given the specific factual circumstances of this case.”
Cautions
Treats arguments not pressed on appeal as abandoned and will not reach them -- frame and brief every issue you want decided.
“But Williams expressly abandoned his other state claims on appeal, so we will not consider them now.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court's decision to the extent (1) it found that federal law covers the same isomers of cocaine as Michigan law and (2) it overruled Wilkes's objection to the inclusion of proffer-protected information. We retain jurisdiction over Wilkes's challenge to his ACCA enhancement based on [123I] ioflupane.”
“For the reasons stated, we VACATE and REMAND with instructions for the district court to dismiss without prejudice Williams's Fair and Just Treatment claim and related assertion of respondeat superior liability.”
“We thus reverse the district court's decision to dismiss this suit in favor of arbitration.”