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Designated Diffidence: District Court Judges on the Courts of Appeals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

James J. Brudney  and
Corey Ditslear
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Abstract

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Since 1980, District Court Judges, designated pursuant to federal statute, have helped decide over 75,000 court of appeals cases—nearly one of every five merits decisions. Although scholars and judges have warned that the presence of these visitors on appellate panels may undermine consistency, legitimacy, or collegiality, little empirical evidence exists related to such concerns. Working with an especially complete data set of labor law opinions, the authors found that district court visitors perform in a much more diffident fashion than their appellate colleagues. They contribute notably fewer majority opinions and dissents. In addition, their participations do not reflect their professional or personal backgrounds to nearly the same degree as their appellate colleagues do when voting on labor law matters. The authors' findings and analyses regarding the behavior of designated district judges should be of interest to appellate courts considering the challenges of caseload management and to scholars studying processes and outcomes in the courts of appeal.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , 2001 , pp. 565 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

We thank Lawrence Baum, Douglas Berman, Victor Brudney, Deborah Merritt, Joseph Sanders, Kevin Scott, Richard Timpone, an esteemed district judge within our database who wishes to remain anonymous, and several anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions; Susanna Marlowe, Elizabeth Pevehouse, and Stephanie Smith for excellent research assistance; and Michele Newton for splendid secretarial support. The Fund for Labor Relations Studies and The Ohio State University each contributed generous financial assistance for this project.

References

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