United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The United StatesCourt of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate courts, and covers only one district court: the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It meets at the E. Barrett PrettymanUnited States Courthouse, near Judiciary Square, Washington, D.C. The D.C. Circuit's prominence and prestige among American courts is second only to the U.S. Supreme Court because its jurisdiction contains the U.S. Congress and many of the U.S. government agencies, and therefore it is the main appellate court for many issues of American administrative law and constitutional law. Four of the current nine justices on the Supreme Court were previously judges on the D.C. Circuit: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate JusticesClarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Brett Kavanaugh. Former justices Fred M. Vinson, Wiley Blount Rutledge, Warren E. Burger, and Antonin Scalia also served as judges on the D.C. Circuit before their appointments to the Supreme Court. Because the D.C. Circuit does not represent any state, confirmation of nominees can be procedurally and practically easier than for nominees to the Courts of Appeals for the other geographical districts, as home-state senators have historically been able to hold up confirmation through the "blue slip" process. However, in recent years, several nominees to the D.C. Circuit were stalled, and some were ultimately not confirmed because senators claimed that the court had become larger than necessary to handle its caseload.
When Congress established this court in 1893 as the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, it had a Chief Justice, and the other judges were called Associate Justices, which was similar to the structure of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justiceship was a separate seat: the President would appoint the Chief Justice, and that person would stay Chief Justice until he left the court. On June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 869 and 62 Stat. 985 became law. These acts made the Chief Justice a Chief Judge. In 1954, another law, 68 Stat. 1245, clarified what was implicit in those laws: that the Chief Judgeship was not a mere renaming of the position but a change in its status that made it the same as the Chief Judge of other inferior courts.
Succession of seats
The court has eleven seats for active judges after the elimination of seat seven under the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007. The seat that was originally the Chief Justiceship is numbered as Seat 1; the other seats are numbered in order of their creation. If seats were established simultaneously, they are numbered in the order in which they were filled. Judges who retire into senior status remain on the bench but leave their seat vacant. That seat is filled by the next circuit judge appointed by the President.
