Talk:United States courts of appeals

message: Hello.  This is my first substantial Wikipedia edit, and my first table in Wikipedia. As I'm still getting my legs, I'd appreciate it if you let me know the reasons for any edits you feel appropriate to that subsection.  Thanks. 			  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ecohansen (talk • contribs) 09:12, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Population

message: Moved as requested. "United States courts of appeal".... LOL! Ryan Norton T | @ | C 07:50, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discision

message: Hi, I was wondering whether someone knows how appointments work.  The president nominates a judge and then the judge is confirmed (or not) in the Senate, in the normal case.  In the unusual case of course, the judge receives a recess appointment and is later nominated and possibly confirmed.  My question is - when are judges allowed to then sit on panels and decide cases?  If you look at bios on www.fjc.gov (go to biographies of judges since 1789) and then enter in a judge's last name.  My example judges are Godbold and Gewin for the two kinds of appointments.  Here are the relevant excerpts from their bios:
Godbold:
Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Nominated by Lyndon B. Johnson on June 28, 1966, to a seat vacated by Richard Taylor Rives; Confirmed by the Senate on July 22, 1966, and received commission on July 22, 1966. Served as chief judge, 1981-1981. Service terminated on October 1, 1981, due to assignment to another court.
Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Reassigned October 1, 1981; Served as chief judge, 1981-1986. Assumed senior status on October 23, 1987. 
Gewin:
Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Received a recess appointment from John F. Kennedy on October 5, 1961, to a new seat created by 75 Stat. 80; nominated on January 15, 1962; Confirmed by the Senate on February 5, 1962, and received commission on February 9, 1962. Assumed senior status on November 1, 1976. Service terminated on May 15, 1981, due to death.
My feeling is that for Godbold who went through the process normally, he gets to sit on panels after he receives "commission," which I'm assuming just means he's now given the power to decide cases.  For Gewin, I believe he gets to decide cases after he receives the recess appointment.  I know this is true because I looked on Lexis-Nexis's legal research section and found cases on whose panels Gewin was sitting after October 5, 1961 and before January 15, 1962.  Obviously it wouldn't make any sense for Gewin not to be able to decide cases before he gets confirmed (otherwise, what is the point of recess appointments!).  So I guess the remaining question is: For the normal appointment process, is the relevant "start date" the date of receiving commission?
Thanks for any help.
Borntostorm 19:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Appointments

message: Please see my move proposal at Talk:Court of Appeals#Rename this article?. --Mathew5000 19:37, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding the article [[Court of Appeals]] 

message: I just discovered United States federal judicial circuits, which covers a little bit of historic material but omits most of the current info from this page; it seems to be talking about the same entities, though (and shares the same map image).  So it seems like they should be merged... unfortunately I don't have near enough time to commit to this, sorry.  /blahedo (t) 05:15, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge proposal 

message: The map needs improvement.  The Sixth Circuit should be a different color than the Eleventh Circuit so that we can tell them apart.  The States of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia are in the Eleventh Circuit, and the States of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee are in the Sixth Circuit, but that division is not clear from the map, because both circuits are the same color.John Paul Parks (talk) 14:18, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Not on my monitor; they are very different colors.  However, you are welcome to upload an improved map if you think it would be helpful to readers.  --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Map Needs Improvement

message: I added a mention of an interested Facebook page where we can discuss the SCOTUS, how the decide cases, etc. It's pretty interesting. A Facebook friend of mine started it and it has a lot of interesting interviews with the Justices and such. ~~ iMatti ~~ (talk) 07:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is not a place for you to promote your friend's web page, and that page is certainly not a reliable source for any information about the federal judiciary.  Please stop spamming Wikipedia. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 07:41, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism  

message: Why is the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces not included as part of this article? It is one of the circuit of the United States Court of Appeals correct? The website for the USCOA for the Armed Forces is actually hosted on the U.S. Courts .gov domain (see here) and not the U.S. Military's .mil TLD. So unless I missed something here I think it should be part of the article. TheGoofyGolfer (talk) 23:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The USCAAF is an Article I court, while the "circuit" courts of appeal are Article III courts, which is why the former is not included in this article.  --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:47, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces 

message: This article begins:
"The United States courts of appeals (or circuit courts) are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system."
The use in this article of the phrase "or circuit courts" is unfortunate.  The article was probably written by a lawyer, and many lawyers informally among themselves do refer to the United States courts of appeals, when speaking generally, as "circuit courts," or in the case of a specific one of these courts as the "nth circuit" or even the "nth circuit court."
But "circuit court" is not an acceptable alternative name for these courts, speaking generally, nor is "nth circuit" or "nth circuit court" an acceptable alternative name for that specific court of appeals.  They are merely shorthand references used among themselves by people who know exactly what the proper names actually are and, therefore, are quite certain there will be no confusion as to what court is being referred to.
A layperson should not be told that "circuit court" is an alternative name. Further, in an encyclopedia article, even using the shorthand "circuit court" to refer back to the perfectly correctly stated name earlier in the article is dangerous because it will encourage lay readers to use the term "circuit court" as a generally acceptable substitute for the correct name, which it isn't.
Aside from its being disrespectful or demeaning to refer to an appellate court as a "circuit" court, it can also be confusing to laypersons because many US states have trial courts named "circuit courts."
Although this article laudably does again and again use the word "appeals" (in context with other words) when referring to these United States courts of appeals, I believe, nevertheless, that, in the several places in the article where it is used, a reference to "circuit court" should be replaced with "court of appeals" or "appeals court" or "the lower court" or any other way of saying it that does not encourage laypersons to refer to these courts using the word "circuit" unaccompanied by some appropriate version of the word "appeal."  Even better would probably be not using the word "circuit" at all, except in a phrase such as "...for the Ninth Circuit."
Under "Procedure," for example, is the phrase: "Except in the Ninth Circuit Courts....  That is dangerous.  Better would be "Except in the appeals courts for the Ninth Circuit..." or some other rewording.  Wikifan2744 (talk) 03:28, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This appears to be your opinion. Do you have a source? While you criticize this as "lawyer-speak", your hyper-technical complaint suggests that you are a lawyer and are approaching this in a manner similar to an exercise in bluebook citations. II | (t - c) 15:39, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

text: My opinion as a somewhat  experienced layperson is the same as Wikifan's:  the use of circuit is confusing.74.60.161.158 (talk) 18:35, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referring to US courts of appeals as "circuit courts" is incorrect and confusing 

message: Hello,
In United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, it seems that Elena Kagan is the "circuit justice". That's quite confusing to me because she is also on SCOTUS. Maybe it would be good to explain somewhere what a "circuit justice" is. (I really don't know, and I would like to learn).
Tony (talk)
: See Supreme Court of the United States#Justices as Circuit Justices. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:19, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning of "circuit justice" 

message: This line in the section about population per circuit is misleading:
* Federal Circuit	12	318,952,000	100	26,579,333
All of the other circuits have jurisdiction over specific geographical areas.  The Federal Circuit does not because it's jurisdiction is limited to particular types of cases, not geography.
It may technically be correct that the Federal Circuit has jurisdiction for everybody in the US, and that the entire population of the US divided by the number of judges is 26 million.  However, these statistics don't say anything useful.  (In fact, it would be much more correct to list the United States Supreme Court on this line, even though the USSC is not a Court of Appeal.)
I suggest replacing the population, percent, and population per judge in that table with a dash ('-') instead of a number, and perhaps some explanation directly below. Techielaw (talk) 07:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Federal Circuit and 100% of the population 

message: There is currently a proposal to split the 9th Circuit into 2, adding a 12th circuit.  The bill is linked here (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/250/text) do you think this should be included or is it better placed somewhere else, or perhaps it should not be mentioned till the bill moves further along the legislative process.Javerthugo (talk) 00:30, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't the first such proposal. If it actually comes to a vote in the House, that would be the time to include it here. bd2412 T 02:01, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to Split the 9th Circuit

message: The "Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences" was replaced with the "Patent Trial and Appeal Board". The Section on Circuit Composition (for appeals to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) still mentions the former.
* , thanks. bd2412 T 22:46, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Patent Trial and Appeal Board" 

message: I am requesting the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to be added to the "See also" section of the United States courts of appeals. Since judges on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia are nominated by the president & confirmed (Or rejected) by the senate, all appeals of the Superior Court of DC decisions go to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals which is also listed on the page for court of appeals & since we have a pending nominee for the  Superior Court of the District of Columbia waiting for a hearing & subsequent confirmation, I think this would be a relevant as well as welcome addition. I am not asking for the link to be included at the top of the page with the rest of the court of appeals court, simply in the "See also" section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dequanhargrove (talk • contribs) 16:58, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Superior Court of the District of Columbia 

message: Hi;
I just updated the population figures in the table for the 2020 census, but I wasn't able to easily check that the number of judgeships remained constant.  Could someone else with more court savvy than I confirm that the numbers of judgeships per circuit (and ergo the population per judge figures) in the table remain accurate?
Thanks!
CogitoErgoSum14 (talk) 21:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updating population per circuit table