What is it like to be a judge?
About this video
A federal appeals judge describes the structure of the federal courts: one Supreme Court plus 'inferior courts' created by Congress, including 94 district courts and the courts of appeals. He explains how busy his Sixth Circuit court is, how cases are heard with or without oral argument, and why his job is mostly reading and writing.
You'll be able to
- describe the levels of the federal court system.
- explain what 'inferior courts' means in the Constitution.
- describe what the daily work of an appeals judge involves.
Key words
- Inferior courts
- Lower federal courts that Congress creates beneath the Supreme Court.
- District court
- A federal trial court; there are 94 of them.
- Pro se
- Representing yourself in court without a lawyer.
- Briefs
- Written arguments that lawyers submit to the court.
- Senior judge
- A semi-retired federal judge who still hears some cases.
Transcript
We lower federal court judges, always, our heart sinks when we see that the framers decided that there would be one US Supreme Court and then some, "inferior courts" as created by Congress. The only thing I can say is inferior courts doesn't always mean inferior judges. But the way they set this up was you had to have this one national court that couldn't be changed and they created federal trial level courts from the outset, 1789. There weren't a lot of cases coming to the federal courts.
There weren't a lot of cases in the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court was not seen as having a big portfolio or a consequential portfolio. Probably the same would have been perceived as true of the inferior courts, district courts with the circuit courts, which it's really not too much later in the 19th century that you create the Federal Courts of Appeals that you have now. You have 94 district courts, so those are the trial judges.
I think it's 800, 900 of them, and if you count senior judges, maybe 1,000. I think the courts of appeals judges are in the 190s of active judges and probably low to mid 200s when you include senior judges, we're a busy court system, as a court of appeals judge, my court is based in Cincinnati, Ohio on the Ohio River.
It covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee. We have seven sitting weeks a year. In a given week, we can hear a low of 16 cases to as many as 30 cases. Some argued, some handled on the briefs depending on level of difficulty, depending on whether the lawyers want argument. We have a whole other docket which includes a lot of people bringing claims from prison or cases in which they're pro se, in other words, they don't have a lawyer, and so most of those will not be handled with arguments, so we'll do those on the briefs, on the papers. It's a reading and writing job. I sometimes describe my job as having to write 1-2, 10-page papers a week for the rest of my life. Sometimes sounds more like a life sentence than life tenure. Happily for me, I've come to love writing. On a Sunday when I've got an opinion to write on a Monday morning,
that's actually something I look forward to. I think we also enjoy arguments. They're really helpful, particularly when you have good advocates who can sharpen the issues and show what the point of decision is.
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