Two District Judgeship bills currently moving through Congress

Safiel · 2022-02-17T03:06:17.787Z

There are currently two comprehensive District Judgeship bills moving through Congress.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4885?q={"search"%3A["Judgeship"%2C"Judgeship"]}&s=2&r=10

In addition to the bill linked to above, an identical Senate bill, S. 2535, exists. These two bipartisan bills reflect the Judicial Conference District Judgeship recommendations.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4886?q={"search"%3A["Judgeship"%2C"Judgeship"]}&s=3&r=9

The above bill was introduced by Representative Hank Johnson and other Democrats and in theory represent the Judiciary’s old standard of 400 weighted cases per judgeship.

The bipartisan Judges Act would created 77 new District Judgeships as recommended by the Judicial Conference, half of such Judgeships to be created in 2025 and half to be created in 2029 to avoid court packing concerns.

Johnson’s bill would create 203 new District Judgeships, all to be effective immediately.

Ok, first of all the Judicial Conference is lowballing its Judgeship requests, as it typically does, even though its revised standard of 430 weighted cases per Judgeship call for significantly more Judgeships than what they have requested.

Johnson, in theory, is on track, but his bill suffers from several misinterpretations of raw judicial caseload data, most particularly, not adjusting for multi-district litigations (MDLs) which create misleadingly high raw caseloads in some districts. He also did not adjust for events such as weather related spikes in districts such as the Eastern District of Louisiana. While in theory his bill is the right approach, in practice some of his individual district numbers are way off.

And Congress will never approve any bill that does not delay the creation of judgeships to future Presidencies.

My own figures, properly adjusted for MDLs, weather and other anomalies, comes out to:

For a 400 weighted caseload per Judge, a net increase of 165 Judgeships, including 171 new Judgeships and the abolition of 6 Judgeships.

For a 430 weighted caseload per Judge, a net increase of 121 Judgeships, including 127 new Judgeships the abolition of 6 Judgeships.

My preference is for the 400 standard, but at this point, I will take whatever damn Judgeships I can get.

Bottom line, even if it is the woefully inadequate Judicial Conference request, we need a District Judgeship bill in the worst way.

Bosun · 2022-02-17T03:41:20.838Z

Interesting thank you lBro

Safiel · 2022-02-17T06:12:07.718Z

To explain a point I made in the OP regarding judicial data.

This is an example of the difficulty of trying to interpret raw judicial data to determine appropriate Judgeship levels, the above figures being for the Southern District of West Virginia.

The data in the image is from June 2010 to September 2021. Starting in about 2012, several Pelvic Mesh MDLs were assigned to the Southern District of West Virginia and the cases persisted until about 2018. As you can clearly see, the raw numbers soar, but in reality, because most of this involved private negotiations, the work of the Judges did not significantly increase. The best way to deal with this issue then, is simple to jettison the raw data during the period the MDL continued.

Bottom line:

I would add ZERO Judgeships to that district.
Hank Johnson’s bill would add 5 Judgeships to that district, because he or his legislative aid failed to properly control for the MDL.

While Johnson’s bill on principle is good, it was poorly executed.

Safiel · 2022-02-17T20:38:55.455Z

The first column is the Judicial Conference request, the second column is the Democrat’s bill, the third column is what I believe should be added using the Judicial Conference’s earlier 400 weighted caseload per Judgeship standard and the fourth column is what I believe should be added using the Judicial Conference’s current 430 weight caseload per Judgeship standard.

Neither the Judicial Conference nor the Democrats address the issue of removing excess Judgeships. The District of Columbia has a gross overage of 3 Judgeships which should be abolished. Hawaii has a gross overage of 1 Judgeship, which can be handled by letting the existing temporary Judgeship expire. Alaska and Wyoming both have a gross overage of 1 Judgeship, and each district should have 1 Judgeship abolished.

In my proposals, an occurrence of a .5 means a roving Judgeship would be moved to serve just one district, which only occurs in Kentucky and Oklahoma.

My 400 proposal is right alongside the Democrat’s proposal and once the Democrat’s proposal is cleaned up in just 6 Districts (D.N.J., S.D.W.Va., E.D.La., E.D.Tex., S.D.Ill. and S.D.Ind.), removing 30 spurious requests, it suddenly becomes a very reasonable proposal. Just 2 cumulative Judgeships more than my own proposal.

And again, the Democratic proposal was right in spirit, just sloppy in execution.

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