Diluting Justice on Appeal?: an Examination of the Use of District Court Judges Sitting by Designation on the United States Courts of Appeals
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University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Volume 28 1995 Diluting Justice on Appeal?: An Examination of the Use of District Court Judges Sitting by Designation on the United States Courts of Appeals Richard B. Saphire University of Dayton School of Law Michael E. Solimine University of Cincinnati College of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr Part of the Courts Commons, and the Judges Commons Recommended Citation Richard B. Saphire & Michael E. Solimine, Diluting Justice on Appeal?: An Examination of the Use of District Court Judges Sitting by Designation on the United States Courts of Appeals, 28 U. MICH. J. L. REFORM 351 (1995). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol28/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DILUTING JUSTICE ON APPEAL?: AN EXAMINA· TION OF THE USE OF DISTRICT COURT JUDGES SITTING BY DESIGNATION ON THE UNITED STATES COURTS OF APPEALS Richard B. Saphire • Michael E. Solimine** According to a number ofstudies and commentators, a serious case load crisis faces the federal courts. With respect to the federal courts of appeals, some have called for drastic remedial measures. Until Congress responds, the courts of appeals have been forced to adopt a range of coping measures. In this article, Professors Saphire and Solimine examine one of these measures, the utilization ofdesignat ed district court judges on appellate panels. After discussing the ori gins and extent of this practice, they identify a number ofproblems it raises. They argue that extensive and routine utilization of district judges on appellate panels has the potential to adversely affect important goals of judicial administration, including the maintenance of collegiality and the.consistency of precedent. They also argue that, by treating district and circuit judges as fungible, current designation practice calls into question the rationality of the federal judicial appointment process and threatens to undermine the quality of appellate justice. * Professor of Law, University of Dayton School of Law. B.A. 1967, Ohio State University; J.D. 1971, Northern Kentucky University, Salmon P. Chase College of Law; LL.M. 1975, Harvard Law School. ** Donald P. Klekamp Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law. B.A. 1978, Wright State University; J.D. 1981, Northwestern University School of Law. Our thanks to Francis Conte, Joseph Tomain, Elliot Slotnick, Steven Washy, Larry Baum, and participants in an Ohio Legal Theory workshop at the Ohio State University College of Law for thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article. A note of special appreciation to the Honorable Gilbert S. Merritt, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Walter H. Rice, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio for sharing their observations with us concerning the issues discussed in the article and for reviewing and com· menting on an earlier draft. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the contributions made by Professor Pamela Stephens to the early conceptualization of the issues we address, the valuable research assistance of Mary Schoelwer, and the support of research grants from the law schools of the University of Dayton and the University of Cincinnati. We emphatically assert the customary disclaimer absolving anyone other than the authors from any responsibility for the contents of this Article. We are extremely grateful to Judith A. McKenna of the Research Division of the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and her associates there for compiling the subset of data on district judges for us. While much of this database is generally accessible to any researcher, the public database does not include the identity ofjudges associated with the cases, so additional work at the F JC was necessary to classify the cases according to the composition of the panels, i.e., whether the panel included one or more visiting circuit or district judges. Ms. McKenna's work, and her comments on other aspects of this article, were invaluable. Of course, neither Ms. McKenna nor the FJC necessarily endorse any of the conclusions we draw from this data. 351 352 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform [VOL. 28:2 [W]e subtly undermine the constitutional system when we treat federal judges as fungible. 1 INTRODUCTION In recent years, more and more people have questioned the capacity of the federal court system to do the work Congress has assigned to it. In his yearly reports to Congress, the cur rent Chief Justice of the United States has expressed concern that the federal courts are approaching the point at which they will not be able to process the cases stacking up on their bur geoning dockets fairly and efficiently.2 Similarly, a recent study of the federal court system concluded that the federal appellate courts are in a "crisis of volume" with "swollen caseloads" which, if left unattended, threaten to undermine the "hall marks of our judiciary." 3 A number of remedies have been proposed to alleviate this problem. These proposals include changes to the en bane pro cedures of the federal courts of appeals, development of new case management techniques, and a range of fundamental "structural alternatives."4 Also prominent have been proposals for the expansion of the number of authorized district and circuit court judgeships. 5 1. Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530, 604 (1962) (Douglas, J., dissenting). 2. See William H. Rehnquist, 1993 Year-End Report, THIRD BRANCH, Jan. 1994, at 1, 1. 3. U.S. JUDICIAL CONFERENCE, REl'ORT OF THE FEDERAL COURTS 8TuDY COMMI'ITEE 109 (1990) [hereinafter 1990 STUDY COMMITl'EE REPORT); see also THOMAS E. BAKER, RATIONING JUSTICE ON APPEAL: THE PRoBLEMS OF THE U.S. COURTS OF APPEALS 31-51 (1994) (detailing past efforts to acknowledge and analyze the "crisis of volume" in the circuit courts); JUDITH A MCKENNA, FED. JUDICIAL CTR., STRUCTURAL AND OTHER ALTERNATIVES FOR THE FEDERAL COURTS OF Al'PEALs 17-35 (1993) (describing the dramat ic increase in appellate caseloads). 4. 1990 STUDY COMMITTEE REPORT, supra note 3, at 114-31; see also J. Clifford Wallace, Tackling the Caseload Crisis, 80 AB.A. J. 88 (June 1994) (calling for a careful examination of"new federal law and its impact on the federal court system"). 5. 1990 STUDY COMMITTEE REPORT, supra note 3, at 111-12 (calling upon the Judicial Conference of the United States to "develop and adopt a weighted caseload formula for determining needed appellate judgeships" and urging that Congress "quickly provide the additional appellate judgeships that the Judicial Conference has requested"). For a recent, extensive study ofremedies that have been proposed to deal with the caseload crisis, see BAKER, supra note 3. For a discussion of the federal court caseload crunch and a critical view of the notion that it should be addressed by expanding the number of courts, see Erwin Chemerinsky & Larry Kramer, Defining WINTER 1995] District Court Judges Sitting By Designation 353 The questions of whether a caseload crisis exists, what the extent of this supposed caseload crisis is, and how many, if any, new judgeships would alleviate it have sparked a lively and public debate among a number of prominent judges of the federal courts of appeals. For example, in a recent article published in the American Bar Association Journal, Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asserted that "our federal court system is too small for the job. "6 Focusing specifically on the courts of appeals, Judge Reinhardt observed that "[t]hose who believe we are doing the same quality work that we did in the past are simply fooling themselves. We adopt more and more procedures for 'expediting' cases, procedures that ensure that individual cases will get less attention."7 Judge Reinhardt described these procedures, including dispensing with oral argument, as en suring that "many cases do not get the full attention they deserve" and argued that the procedures undercut the goal of providing for a "first-class federal court system. "8 His proposed solution to the problem was "simply that Congress double the size of the courts of appeals. "9 the Role ofthe Federal Courts, 1990 B.Y.U. L. REV. 67, 69-74. See also Robert H. Bork, Dealing With the Overload in Article III Courts, 70 F.R.D. 231 (1976) (determining that the "crisis" facing the federal courts is "simply overload, an overload so serious that the integrity of the federal system is threatened," and recommending a realloca tion of disputes among different tribunals). 6. Stephen Reinhardt, 7bo Few Judges, 7bo Many Cases: A Plea to Save the Federal Courts, 79 A.B.A. J. 52, 52 (Jan. 1993). 7. Id. 8. Id. 9. Id. at 53. Judge Reinhardt noted that, even if Congress were to adopt his proposal, our present stream of cases would be more than enough to keep us busy with a full workload. The only difference would be that far more of the cases we are now handling would receive the full attention they deserve, and the quality of justice in our courts would be substantially improved. Id. It should be noted that Judge Reinhardt's proposal was, according to a judicial colleague, "precipitated in part by the request of the [Ninth] Circuit . for an additional 10 judges, and by pending legislation that will substantially increase the federal caseload." Dolores K.