Wednesday, May 28, 2025

A "National" Appellate Court?

The NLJ has A National Appellate Court? Why This Law Professor is Urging Circuit-Level Reform and What it Could Look Like -- "Instead of having discrete, regional circuits where one party can dramatically outnumber the other and where litigants and district judges know with some degree of certainty who will hear their cases, the National Court would draw from all active and senior circuit judges nationwide," said professor John P. Collins Jr.:
Debate over U.S. Supreme Court reform—from term limits to a code of ethics—has raged in recent years, but less attention has been paid to the federal lower appeals courts.
In a Temple Law Review paper this month, law professor John P. Collins Jr. argues that structural change is needed at intermediate courts, too, to combat what he calls “circuit capture.” That is where a political party or president stacks a circuit with appointees handpicked for specific views and creates a supermajority on the court to advance a political agenda. His proposal? A single national intermediate court of appeals with cases heard by randomly selected panels from a roster of all 271 active and senior circuit court judges.