Legal News

Out West, Senior Judges More Than Carrying Their Weight

By Ashby Jones

A little over a year ago, we went on record saying that the mandatory retirement age for federal judges should be 85.

A year later (and a year closer to 85), we stand by that. But we do so knowing now that if such a policy were adopted tomorrow, the Ninth Circuit would suffer bigtime, according to this LAT article.

Senior judges in the largest appellate circuit shoulder one-third of the legal load, according to the article.

The reason: due to partisan bickering between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, too many judicial seats stay empty for too long, requiring more work of judges who’ve taken “senior status” — taken on a reduced caseload.

Nationwide, seniors handle 21% of the federal judiciary’s work, said David Sellers, an assistant director of the federal court agency. The 19 senior judges on the Ninth Circuit handled 33% of the appeals court’s work in the year that ended in September, said Molly Dwyer, the court’s clerk, to the LAT.

A bill repeatedly introduced in Congress since the mid-1990s would expand the judiciary by 63 judges, including five for the 9th Circuit.

But Brookings Institution scholar Russell Wheeler noted that the bill has languished for years while the federal caseload soared with immigration and drug cases.

As a result, “the circuit could not function without those active senior judges,” Arthur Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, said of the 9th Circuit.

But he warns of the unsustainable status quo of judges working well into their 80s.

“It’s a looming problem that will reach a period, probably fairly soon, where the percentage of help you can get from seniors is substantially reduced,” Hellman said. “Then the court will really be in trouble.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 14, 2011 (boomark / email).