Question About Federal Courts of Appeals

February 13, 2017

Can someone explain to me the political considerations underpinning the obviously too-large Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals?

10 comments… add one
  • sam Link

    A bit dated, but I think the situation may be even worse now:

    Concern about the future of the Ninth Circuit is understandable. In 2005, the circuit received 16,000 appeals, seven thousand more than the next busiest circuit and triple the national average. It was also the slowest circuit in the country, with the median case taking 16 months to make its way through — two months longer than the next slowest circuit and four months longer than the average circuit.

    To some extent, the current heavy caseload is an anomaly. Several years ago, the Bush Administration decided to eliminate a massive backlog of tens of thousands cases at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Once the BIA disposed of the cases, many were then appealed – and more than half ended up in the Ninth Circuit, accounting for a sizeable portion of its current caseload. But even beyond these cases, it’s clear the Ninth Circuit is overloaded with work.

    The Ninth Circuit currently has seats for 28 judges, twice as many as most other circuits. But each judge must handle far more cases than judges elsewhere. In 2005, for example, there were more than 650 appeals per active judge on the Ninth Circuit. (Unlike active judges, “senior” judges may opt to work on fewer cases, so while their services are invaluable, their caseloads are not representative.) Only the Eleventh Circuit came close to that number; many other circuits had about half the number of appeals per active judge.

    [Source]

  • Dave Schuler Link

    There’s a principle in project management under which when any activity goes beyond a certain scale intra-process communications occupy more time than actually working on the project. I can’t help but wonder if the 9th Circuit doesn’t suffer from this problem.

  • Janis Gore Link

    Here’s something that might address the question:

    https://my-news-site.com/news/158633/why-the-9th-circuit-court-is-such-an-attractive-target-for-republican-lawmakers

  • Dave Schuler Link

    What that doesn’t explain is why it wasn’t a target twenty years ago. Everything said in that article has been true for decades.

  • Janis Gore Link

    It was. Here is a response to a discussion to a discussion in 1996:

    http://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1895&context=mlr

  • Janis Gore Link

    Here’s an LA times article from 1997 that addresses the politics to some degree:

    http://articles.latimes.com/1997/nov/13/news/mn-53260

    It was brought up again around 2006. I’ve read that efforts go back to the 40s but haven’t found anything on that so far.

  • Andy Link

    Sounds like it’s time to split it up and create another circuit court.

  • Jan Link

    What Andy said is what is frequently being discussed.

  • Janis Gore Link

    Here’s a 1973 article from the NYT regarding the Hruska commission report which suggested dividing the Ninth:

    http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/23/archives/hruska-unit-asks-court-expansion-commission-aims-to-relieve.html

  • Guarneri Link

    “There’s a principle in project management under which when any activity goes beyond a certain scale intra-process communications occupy more time than actually working on the project.”

    Heh. At the end of most M&A deals the general feeling is “Tranquility base, the Eagle has landed.”

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