Court Opinion

ID: 9471657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:38:05.007824+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:31.281843
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I join Judge Schroeder’s incisive dissent. I write separately only to add that, in my view, magistrates should be made Article III judges.
Although they hold different titles, federal judges and federal magistrates vow to perform their respective duties pursuant to the same oath of office which includes the obligation to “administer justice without respect to person, and [to] do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”1
Under 28 U.S.C. § 686(c) (Supp. V. 1981), the federal district courts, with Congress’s approval, have delegated to federal magistrates a significant share of the judicial business of the United States that, although it involves ordinary people, is very important. Magistrates typically hear cases involving entitlement to social security benefits, deportation orders under the immigration laws, discharges from the civil and military services, civil rights claims arising under both the Constitution and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981-1986 (1976), and petitions for habe-as corpus. See, e.g., C.D.Cal.Gen. Order No. 194, R. 1.0. Even though magistrates perform important judicial functions, the mantle of independence essential to Article III decisionmaking has been withheld.
To correct this situation, magistrates should be awarded Article III protections commensurate with the Article III work that they now so commendably perform.

. 28 U.S.C. § 631(g) (Supp. V 1981) requires magistrates to take the same oath that Justices and judges of the United States must take under 28 U.S.C. § 453 (1976), which reads:
I, [name of oath-taker], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will adminster justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [title of office] according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.