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Judges, lawmakers, and scholars have long debated whether the federal courts of appeals are understaffed and, if so, how Congress should go about redressing that fact. Even though there is currently a strong argument that some new judgeships should be created, such a path presents logistical complications. If a significant number of seats are added to the appellate bench, circuits may eventually become too large to function well. And if a significant number of circuits are ultimately split, the total number of federal appellate courts may become too large for the judiciary as a whole to function well. Furthermore, there are political complications. Congress may be disinclined to authorize new judgeships, as has been the case for the past thirty years. But this does not mean that there is no smooth path to increasing judge power at the courts of appeals. Indeed, a promising possibility exists that rests almost entirely within the judiciary's control: raise the incentives (and lower the disincentives) for taking senior status. Currently, when a judge has satisfied the "Rule of 80" (meaning that the judge is sixty-five or older and his or her age plus years of service totals eighty or more), that judge can leave regular active service. The judge can elect to continue hearing cases and assist the court as a senior judge, but "going senior" also creates a vacancy that can be filled with another judge, thereby adding to the court's overall capacity. There are currently more than sixty judges who are eligible to take senior status, amounting to a third of all authorized federal appellate judgeships--the possible gains are considerable. This Essay begins the task of identifying and proposing stronger incentives for federal appellate judges to take senior status. As part of a larger research project on the internal operations of the federal courts of appeals, it relies upon interview data with judges and survey data from court administrators to identify the different ways senior judges are treated across the courts of appeals. These variations in practice are important to document, particularly since some of them were unknown even to members of the judiciary. But these variations also highlight possible changes that could improve the balance of incentives for taking senior status. Ultimately, the Essay's reform proposal involves modest changes that could create substantial benefits in terms of judge power. Its promise lies with appreciating the finer details of court administration, including which can feasibly be altered. Just as importantly, its promise lies with not relying upon the actions of the elected branches, but upon changes that can be made by the courts themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that Article III judges hold particular seats on particular courts, the federal system rests on judicial interchangeability. Hundreds of judges “visit” other courts each year and collectively help decide thousands of appeals. Anyone from a retired Supreme Court Justice to a judge from the U.S. Court of International Trade to a district judge from out of circuit may come and hear cases on a given court of appeals. Although much has been written about the structure of the federal courts and the nature of Article III judgeships, little attention has been paid to the phenomenon of “sitting by designation”—how it came to be, how it functions today, and what it reveals about the judiciary more broadly. This Article offers an overdue account of visiting judges. It begins by providing an origin story, showing how the current practice stems from two radically different traditions. The first saw judges as fixed geographically, and allowed for visitors only as a stopgap measure when individual judges fell ill or courts fell into arrears with their cases. The second assumed greater fluidity within the courts, requiring Supreme Court Justices to ride circuit—to visit different regions and act as trial and appellate judges—for the first half of the Court’s history. These two traditions together provide the critical context for modern-day visiting. The Article then presents a thick descriptive analysis of contemporary practice. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative data, it brings to light the numerous differences in how the courts of appeals use outside judges today. While some courts regularly rely on visitors for workload relief, others bring in visiting judges to instruct them on the inner workings of the circuit, and another eschews having visitors altogether in part because the practice was once thought to be used for political ends. These findings raise vital questions about inter- and intra-circuit consistency, the dissemination of culture and institutional knowledge within the courts, and the substitutability of federal judges. The Article concludes by taking up these questions, reflecting on the implications of visiting judges for the federal courts as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses justice in America in relation to the nation's appellate justice system as of 2014, focusing on the reportedly excessive workloads that many U.S. federal appellate court judges must deal with. The U.S. Commission on Revision of the Federal Court Appellate System and the book "Injustice on Appeal: The United States Courts of Appeals in Crisis" by William M. Richman and William L. Reynolds are mentioned. Oral arguments, law clerks, and prisoner-related lawsuits are examined.

Federal appellate judges no longer have the time to hear argument and draft opinions in all of their cases. The average annual filing per active judgeship now stands at 330 filed cases per year--more than four times what it was sixty years ago. In response, judges have adopted case management strategies that effectively involve spending significantly less time on certain classes of cases than on others. Various scholars have decried this state of affairs, suggesting that the courts have created a "bifurcated" system of justice with "separate and unequal tracks." These reformers propose altering the relevant constraints of the courts, primarily by increasing the number of judges or decreasing the judiciary's caseload. These approaches, however, have not gained political traction thus far and seem unlikely to in the foreseeable future. This Article takes a realist approach and argues that we should recognize judicial attention for what it is--a scarce resource--and assess whether there is evidence that the courts are allocating that resource improperly. Loosely borrowing the framework of resource allocation from the political science and economics literatures, this Article considers how to apply the concepts of inputs and outputs to the work of the federal appellate courts, suggesting judicial attention as the input and a combination of error correction and law development as the output. It then makes the preliminary case that the courts' case management techniques in fact largely comport with an output-maximization approach, while still limiting inequality of outputs across cases. This Article concludes that the courts' overall strategy nevertheless presents opportunities for enhancement. It suggests several improvements, focusing on the review structure of cases that receive the least amount of judicial attention, to help ensure that all federal cases receive an appropriate form of appellate review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court has increasingly considered a particular kind of argu-ment: that it should avoid reaching decisions that would "open the floodgates of litigation. " Despite its frequent invocation, there has been little scholarly explora-tion of what a floodgates argument truly means, and even less discussion of its normative basis. This Article addresses both subjects, demonstrating for the first time the scope and surprising variation of floodgates arguments, as well as uncov-ering their sometimes-shaky foundations. Relying on in-depth case studies from a wide array of issue areas, the Article shows that floodgates arguments primarily have been used to protect three institutions: coordinate branches of government, the state courts, and the federal courts themselves. In the former two instances, the Court's desire to avoid floods is supported by independent constitutional principles and doctrine, including separation of powers and federalism, lending these kinds of arguments a prima facie legitimacy. With regard to the final instance, however, the Court has relied on floodgates arguments solely to protect itself and the rest of the federal judiciary from what it sees as an excessive workload, raising difficult questions about separation of powers and the measures courts can take to ensure their ability to administer justice. The Article concludes by arguing for a presump-tion against court-centered floodgates arguments--positing that the Court should let the lower courts rely on alternative mechanisms, such as procedural rules and case-management techniques, to handle new claims instead of closing the court-house doors to stave them off altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal appellate judges no longer have the time to hear argument and draft opinions in all of their cases. The average annual filing per active judgeship now stands at 330 filed cases per year-more than four times what it was sixty years ago. In response, judges have adopted case management strategies that effectively involve spending significantly less time on certain classes of cases than on others. Various scholars have decried this state of affairs, suggesting that the courts have created a "bifurcated" system of justice with "separate and unequal tracks." These reformers propose altering the relevant constraints of the courts, primarily by increasing the number of judges or decreasing the judiciary's caseload. These approaches, however, have not gained political traction thus far and seem unlikely to in the foreseeable future. This Article takes a realist approach and argues that we should recognize judicial attention for what it is-a scarce resource-and assess whether there is evidence that the courts are allocating that resource improperly. Loosely borrowing the framework of resource allocation from the political science and economics literatures, this Article considers how to apply the concepts of inputs and outputs to the work of the federal appellate courts, suggesting judicial attention as the input and a combination of error correction and law development as the output. It then makes the preliminary case that the courts' case management techniques in fact largely comport with an output-maximization approach, while still limiting inequality of outputs across cases. This Article concludes that the courts' overall strategy nevertheless presents opportunities for enhancement. It suggests several improvements, focusing on the review structure of cases that receive the least amount of judicial attention, to help ensure that all federal cases receive an appropriate form of appellate review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case-management practices of appellate courts define the judicial review of appeals. The circuit courts constantly make decisions about which cases will receive oral argument, which will have dispositions written by staff attorneys in lieu of judges, and which will result in unpublished opinions—decisions that exert a powerful influence on the quality of justice that can be obtained from the federal appellate courts. Despite their importance, there has been no in-depth review of the case-management practices of the different circuit courts in the academic literature. This Article begins to fill that void. It first documents and analyzes the practices of five circuit courts using qualitative research from a series of interviews of appellate judges, clerks of court, court mediators, and staff attorneys. This thorough account of case management reveals the great extent to which these practices vary across circuits. The Article considers reasons for the variation and asks whether such a lack of uniformity is problematic in a federal system. The Article concludes that disuniformity in case management is more defensible than in substantive and procedural law, but that current practices can and should be improved through increased transparency and information sharing between the circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a conference by the periodical, the Bolch Institute for Judicial Studies, and the Duke Center for Science and Justice, held at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina, in September, 2019. Topics include the contribution of the fines, fees and bail to cycles of poverty and criminalization; imposing mandatory fines and fees on the indigent; and nationwide litigation challenging fines-and-fees practices such as the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced in January 2006 the use of intraperitoneal (IP) combined with IV chemotherapy postoperatively as the preferred treatment method for advanced ovarian cancer. The announcement stimulated the need for oncology nurses to become familiar with IP chemotherapy administration and patient management guidelines. IP administration allows a high concentration of chemotherapy to come into direct contact with tumors and surrounding tissues and organs. IP chemotherapy also is administered in clinical trials and some clinical settings for other histologies, such as low-grade gastrointestinal carcinoma and appendiceal carcinoma, which tend to spread locally before invading the bloodstream. Local-regional chemotherapy potentially is an ideal treatment for local spread of those peritoneal carcinomas. Overall side effects from regional treatment are less severe than with systemic treatment. Oncology nurses can help minimize and alleviate discomfort associated with IP chemotherapy administration. This article focuses on nursing management strategies for patients receiving IP chemotherapy for ovarian cancer and other peritoneal carcinomatosis.