the Race to the Bottom

We have always benefited on this Blog from the active participation and sponsorship from faculty at the Daniels School of Business at the University of Denver.  John Holcomb has been one of them.  He has written the post below on Judge Naves' ruling with respect to qualified immunity.   

Could it be that Judge Naves was shielding his ruling on the remedy by holding off ruling on quasi-judicial immunity until the trial was over? Maybe he was actually being crafty. If he had ruled on a motion for summary judgment earlier and stopped the trial at that point, then that ruling would have been subject to immediate appeal. Had he then been reversed, the trial itself would start at a much later time, leaving everything in limbo and perhaps taking Naves out of case on remand. This way, he accomplished three things: (1) expedited resolution of the issues, arguably important for the public interest; (2) exercised his own judicial discretion (or perhaps activism) to render a remedy he thought just, even if he is reversed on the severable immunity issue and (3) kept himself in the case, rather than risk it going to some other judge on remand.