page_title: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
section_title: Size of the court
hierarchical_section_title: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit / Controversy / Size of the court
caption_attribution_description: English: Mary M. Schroeder,
context_page_description: The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:
  District of Alaska
  District of Arizona
  Central District of California
  Eastern District of California
  Northern District of California
  Southern District of California
  District of Hawaii
  District of Idaho
  District of Montana
  District of Nevada
  District of Oregon
  Eastern District of Washington
  Western District of Washington
  It also has appellate jurisdiction over the following territorial courts:
  District of Guam
  District of the Northern Mariana Islands
  Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the Ninth Circuit is by far the largest of the thirteen courts of appeals, with 29 active judgeships. The court's regular meeting places are Seattle at the William Kenzo Nakamura United States Courthouse, Portland at the Pioneer Courthouse, San Francisco at the James R. Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building, and Pasadena at the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals.
  Panels of the court occasionally travel to hear cases in other locations within the circuit.
context_section_description: Many commentators have argued that the Ninth Circuit faces several adverse consequences of its large size, such as "unwieldly size, procedural inefficiencies, jurisprudential unpredictability, and unusual en banc process."
  Chief among these is the Ninth Circuit's unique rules concerning the composition of an en banc court. In other circuits, en banc courts are composed of all active circuit judges, plus (depending on the rules of the particular court) any senior judges who took part in the original panel decision. By contrast, in the Ninth Circuit it is impractical for 29 or more judges to take part in a single oral argument and deliberate on a decision en masse. The court thus provides for a limited en banc review by the Chief Judge and a panel of 10 randomly selected judges. This means that en banc reviews may not actually reflect the views of the majority of the court and indeed may not include any of the three judges involved in the decision being reviewed in the first place. The result, according to detractors, is a high risk of intracircuit conflicts of law where different groupings of judges end up delivering contradictory opinions. That is said to cause uncertainty in the district courts and within the bar. However, en banc review is a relatively rare occurrence in all circuits and Ninth Circuit rules provide for full en banc review in limited circumstances.
  All recently proposed splits would leave at least one circuit with 21 judges, only two fewer than the 23 that the Ninth Circuit had when the limited en banc procedure was first adopted. In other words, after a split at least one of the circuits would still be using  limited en banc courts.
  In March 2007, Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee that the consensus among the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States was that the Ninth Circuit was too large and unwieldy and should be split.
  Congressional officials, legislative commissions, and interest groups have all submitted proposals to divide the Ninth Circuit such as:
  Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Reorganization Act of 1993, H.R. 3654
  Final Report of the Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals
  Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of Reorganization Act of 2003, S. 562
  Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judgeship and Reorganization Act of 2003, H.R. 2723
  Ninth Circuit Judgeship and Reorganization Act of 2004, S. 878 (reintroduced as the Ninth Circuit Judgeship and Reorganization Act of 2005, H.R. 211, and co-sponsored by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay)
  Circuit Court of Appeals Restructuring and Modernization Act of 2005, S. 1845
  Circuit Court of Appeals Restructuring and Modernization Act of 2007, S. 525
caption: Former Chief Judges Mary M. Schroeder and Procter Ralph Hug Jr.
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