The Interdependent Third Branch
Tracking court organization, administration, structure, and strategy
Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the latest challenge to President Trump’s executive order on immigration. For the first time in circuit history, the court allowed the arguments to be recorded and broadcast on CSPAN.
Even without video, it was an insightful colloquy to listen to. Imagine if viewers could have seen who was talking! Still, score one for transparency, and for the court not being afraid to show its important work to the broader public.
Previous coverage here.
A few more details here.
Among the rumored names are several state supreme court justices. If that pans out, we’ll have more to say in the coming days on the impact of state-level experience on the federal bench.
The Legal Intelligencer reports that only 17.5% of federal appellate cases decided on their merits were disposed of after oral argument in 2015-16, the most recent statistical year available. Put another way, nearly five out of every six cases that are filed in the U.S. Courts of Appeal are decided without any sort of oral hearing. That is a significant drop: ten years ago, nearly 26% of cases received an oral hearing before disposition. Twenty years ago, the number was better than 40%.
The decline in hearings at the appellate level is, unfortunately, representative of a larger trend. A few years ago, Judge William Young (D. Mass.) and I examined the time that federal district judges spent on trials and courtroom hearings — a statistic we called “bench presence” — and found a year-over-year decline from FY2008 through FY2013. By 2013, federal district judges — our trial judges! — reported spending about only 2 hours a day on average in the courtroom.
Continue reading “Oral arguments in federal court continue to decline”
In Florida, as in many other states, the state’s U.S. Senators have created a nominating panel to recommend potential nominees for the federal judicial openings. As part of the larger vacancy crisis, Florida currently has seven openings at the federal district court level. The state’s Lieutenant Governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, has been chosen as the new head of the nominating panel.
Let’s hope that the panel does good work, President Trump takes advantage of their pre-screening process, Senators Rubio and Nelson help shepherd the nominees through the Senate, and the people of Florida are able to enjoy a full-strength federal bench in short order.
David Lat has a circuit-by-circuit breakdown of possible nominees for the federal courts of appeals. Must read stuff, as always.
IP Watchdog has an excellent breakdown. And this part of the analysis seems spot on:
Past litigation reports from Lex Machina have pointed to the fact that volatility in patent case filings are typically triggered by changes to the patent system, or even just proposed changes. Spikes in patent litigation have closely preceded changes like the abrogation of Form 18 to plead patent infringement in district court as well as the enactment of provisions of the America Invents Act. Given the fact that the debate on patent reform isn’t currently reverberating in Congress the way it has in recent years, it’s possible that the recent downturn in high-volume plaintiff filings is due to calmer waters in the patent system. The next foreseeable change to the U.S. patent system stem from the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, so it will be interesting to see if the court’s ruling in that case creates any similar volatility in case filings.
The Fourth Circuit’s openness to live streaming comes in the wake of significant public interest in the Ninth Circuit’s live stream of similar arguments in February. More the 137,000 people logged on to hear those arguments.
From the National Law Journal story:
Rob Rosborough, a partner at Whiteman Osterman & Hanna in Albany, New York, added that he was “impressed by how accessible it made the proceedings seem in a highly technical case like that one.”
“You could hear phenomenal attorneys on both sides advocate for their clients on issues that had an impact on millions of people nationwide,” Rosborough said. “I do think that the Fourth Circuit, and all courts, should livestream arguments in all cases, especially in cases like the travel ban that have drawn such public interest.”
The Fourth Circuit has not live streamed arguments to date, although it does post audio files of arguments on its website the day after they are held.
David Lat has a typically insightful post at Above the Law, looking at the potential nominees for openings in the federal district courts and federal circuit courts. One of the more striking parts of his analysis is the relative youth of many of the names being kicked around — most are in their 30s or 40s. This makes sense from the President’s perspective; younger judges allow him to shape the federal bench for decades to come. But it is also a moment of reckoning for those of us in that generation. Continue reading “Gen X prepares to take the bench”
In several states, the two senators collectively create a screening committee to recommend names of local attorneys and state judges to the President for a federal judicial appointment. The committees are not mandatory, and have been used somewhat haphazardly over time, but they do allow senators to provide useful information to the President about qualified individuals for the federal bench. The committees also help lock the senators in when home-state openings arise: by pre-screening a list of possible candidates, the senators are essentially telling the President that they will support any nominee who comes from that list. Such advance agreement avoids the embarrassment that Senator Michael Bennett must have felt earlier this month when, for purely partisan reasons, he had to vote against an extremely well-qualified fellow Coloradan, Neil Gorsuch, for the Supreme Court. Continue reading “Washington’s senators ask President to honor work of their judicial screening committee”
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