I once clerked for a federal judge who was part of the old-style "hands off" school of judging - let the parties fashion their own cases and let the court operate around the edges to make sure they stay in bounds. That style of judging had its advantages but it was horrible for case management. My judge wound up with nearly 400 active cases on his docket on average while judges who more actively managed their cases trended toward the low 200s. Litigants in any given case, then, might have a sense of having more control over their cases but the overall pattern was one of interminable delays as dockets and calendars got clogged with more and more situations where lawyers played out their antics without too much supervision.

Judge Alsup is of a different school. He is definitely "hands on" and handles cases in ways that put the parties under significant pressure to trim their marginal claims and defenses, to scale back on wild discovery forays, and to give serious consideration to getting to an expeditious trial (or settling) rather than potentially be steamrolled by the judge (for example, as he has impliedly threatened to do to Oracle, if it otherwise did not trim its wilder claims, by sending it packing while he stays the litigation pending patent reexaminations). One can agree or not with such a style and it can sometimes border on judicial abuse but it definitely leads to leaner dockets and calendars that are far less cluttered with marginal garbage than one would find on the docket of a more latitudinarian judge. A good (but strict and tough) judge will only play this out in areas where the judge has lawful discretion to make such calls because trying to force things that are plainly against the rules is abusive, leads to injustice, and makes for hack judging. When a judge is tough in the right sense, however, it is amazing to watch how this can trim the excesses of the adversary system and lead to better justice than would otherwise be the case if the parties were simply allowed to run wild.

The arm-twisting that is evident in the appointment of the court's own expert on damages is a direct message to both parties that they should refrain from going to wildly speculative extremes and focus on credible claims of damages only. Since there is Ninth Circuit authority for such an appointment, this is not overtly out-of-bounds for the judge to do but it is definitely aggressive and does pose a risk of prejudicing jurors if not properly handled. Reasonable minds can differ on this one but, in terms of case handling, this is one more in a series of examples of a judge suffering no nonsense in his courtroom and is at that level quite admirable.