Cornell Law Review Volume 103 Article 2 Issue 1 November 2017 Panel Assignment in the Federal Courts of Appeals Marin K. Levy Duke University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr Part of the Courts Commons Recommended Citation Marin K. Levy, Panel Assignment in the Federal Courts of Appeals, 103 Cornell L. Rev. 65 (2017) Available at: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol103/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. \\jciprod01\productn\C\CRN\103-1\CRN102.txt unknown Seq: 1 17-NOV-17 13:58 PANEL ASSIGNMENT IN THE FEDERAL COURTS OF APPEALS Marin K. Levy† It is common knowledge that the federal courts of appeals typically hear cases in panels of three judges and that the composition of the panel can have significant consequences for case outcomes and for legal doctrine more generally. Yet neither legal scholars nor social scientists have focused on the question of how judges are selected for their panels. Instead, a substantial body of scholarship simply assumes that panel assignment is random. This Article provides what, up until this point, has been a missing account of panel assignment. Drawing on a multiyear qualitative study of five circuit courts, including in-depth inter- views with thirty-five judges and senior administrators, I show that strictly random selection is a myth, and an improb- able one at that—in many instances, it would have been im- possible as a practical matter for the courts studied here to create their panels by random draw.