Congress, in the Judiciary Act of , commonly known as the Evarts Act, established nine courts of appeals, one for each judicial circuit at the time. The Act created another judge position for each circuit, identified in the legislation as the circuit justice. Appeals from trial court decisions were heard by three-judge panels made up of the circuit justice, a court of appeals judge, and a district court judge. The Act recognized nine circuits. Today 12 circuits hear appeals.
District of New Hampshire. District of Puerto Rico. District of Rhode Island. District of Connecticut. Eastern District of New York. Northern District of New York. Southern District of New York. Western District of New York. District of Vermont. District of Delaware. District of New Jersey. Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Western District of Pennsylvania. District of Maryland. Eastern District of North Carolina. Middle District of North Carolina. Western District of North Carolina. District of South Carolina. Eastern District of Virginia. Western District of Virginia. Northern District of West Virginia. Southern District of West Virginia. Eastern District of Louisiana. Middle District of Louisiana.
Western District of Louisiana. Northern District of Mississippi. Southern District of Mississippi. Eastern District of Texas. Northern District of Texas. Southern District of Texas. Western District of Texas. Eastern District of Kentucky. Western District of Kentucky.
Eastern District of Michigan. Western District of Michigan. Northern District of Ohio. Southern District of Ohio. Eastern District of Tennessee. Middle District of Tennessee. Western District of Tennessee. Central District of Illinois. Northern District of Illinois. Southern District of Illinois. The influential U. Judicial Conference, for instance, currently suggests only two additional circuit court seats on top of the current , amounting to a 1 percent increase in the circuit courts.
In making its recommendations, the Judicial Conference uses a system based on examining the number of filings for each court, which is calculated differently at the district and appellate levels. Given the above statistics and illustrations, however, it is clear that a much broader expansion is necessary to begin to make meaningful improvements.
An expansion of the appellate courts by approximately the same rate that occurred in —30 percent—would mirror the growth of the U. Further, such an expansion would help the judiciary become more reflective of America. If all the newly appointed judges were women, for example, women would finally make up approximately half of the bench. Of course, not every new judge is likely to be a woman—or a person of color, public defender, legal aid attorney, or civil rights attorney.
There would still be significant work to do after a robust court expansion to improve diversity on the courts. But this example shows why a large expansion—much closer to the expansion that occurred under President Carter than that proposed by the Judicial Conference—is the only meaningful path forward to bring real change to the courts in the near future, in regard to both access to justice and diversity.
Although previous modernization efforts have received broad support from both Democrats and Republicans, far-right extremists have succeeded in fostering a politically charged atmosphere that has infected current discussions on expansion. When Donald Trump won the presidential election, conservative legal activists were elated. In , a well-known leader of the legal right, Steven G.
Calabresi, went a step further to suggest that Republicans should dramatically expand the lower courts. In fact, despite general bipartisan agreement that expansion is necessary, many congressional Republicans have been fixated on preventing the current president from filling any new seats Congress may eventually create.
This posturing should not be taken seriously. Historically, when an expansion bill has passed, the president in office has begun the task of filling new seats as a matter of course. Moreover, the current president has already proven himself dedicated to modernizing the courts in a variety of ways.
The Act reduced the number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court to four, ended the requirement of circuit riding for the justices and established sixteen new judgeships for six circuits. It was quickly repealed by the Jefferson administration and Congress. For the full text of the document, see: Text of the Judiciary Act of For more information on the politics of the legislation, see: Judiciary Act of The Judiciary Act of was enacted by a Republican majority Congress to replace the Judiciary Act of , which was repealed.
The Act kept the six regional circuits proposed in the Act of , though they were made smaller for the judges who again had to ride the circuit. Also addressed was the settling of disputed cases; now if a district and circuit judge disagreed, the case could be heard by the Supreme Court. Most notably, the Act of eliminated the sixteen judgeships created by the Act of and created one annual session for the Supreme Court, to begin on the first Monday in February every year.
Previously, the court also participated in a summer session. It also established the Seventh Circuit, to represent the expanding nation with states Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
The act was passed to accommodate the growing caseload of the western states, and bring them into the national model of the court system. The Eighth and Ninth Circuits Act of created the Eighth and Ninth Circuits in order to provide for an expanded caseload due to the admission of new states to the Union.
Because district court jurisdiction had been created in the eight new states, the act repealed that and granted jurisdiction to the newly formed circuit court. This Act also rearranged the Seventh Circuit and created two new seats on the Supreme Court to support the circuit court. Eighth Circuit consists of: Kentucky , Tennessee and Missouri. To address the increasing caseload and travel issues of citizens of California, the United States Congress decided to establish a circuit court with appellate jurisdiction only over the districts in California, and to appoint a judge to serve that court full-time.
This was the California Circuit Act of The United States Circuit Court for the Districts of California was given the same original and appellate jurisdiction that the eastern circuit courts had.
The Circuit Court for the Districts of California was the first circuit court in America since the six established by the Judiciary Act of were abolished in which did not have a Supreme Court justice assigned to it.
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