Judiciary News

For federal courts, Law Day 2015 will be an opportunity to educate the public about the rule of law, inspired in part by the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which established the principle that no man or government is above the law.

In order to adequately support the Constitutional and statutory mission of the federal courts, the Judiciary today asked Congressional appropriators to provide $7 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2016, a 3.9 percent increase over the preceding year.

Representative Robert W. Kastenmeier “understood the federal courts like few others,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said in 1992. “More importantly ... his involvement served an important national interest.” Kastenmeier, who spent more than two decades as chair of the House subcommittee that had jurisdiction over the federal courts, died March 20 at the age of 91.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York had a room filled with files. That’s not unusual. Even though today most cases are filed electronically, case records have a way of accumulating over the years. But in less than five months, with the end of the fiscal year, the court needed to clear the room. The files had to go.

The Judicial Conference of the United States today voted to make a judge-specific workload report available for the first time over the Internet at no charge and also approved a courtroom sharing policy for magistrate judges in new courthouse and courtroom construction.

Federal courts have reduced the space they occupy and cut rent costs at facilities throughout the country, according to a report provided today to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Reports on the 2014 caseload of the federal courts and the activities of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts were released today.

More than 4,000 visitors—including school groups, law school students, Boy and Girl Scouts, judges and international dignitaries—visited the St. Louis-based Judicial Learning Center in 2014, according to a report on the center.

It took nearly 140 years after the federal court system was established in 1789 before the first woman sat on a federal bench. Today, about one-third of all active Article III judges are women.

Thanks to a new program available through the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), debtors in participating courts now have the option of receiving court-generated notices and orders electronically. The new system saves both time and money.

Earlier this month, Chief Judge K. Michael Moore (S.D. Fla.) administered the oath of office to four members of the South Florida Congressional delegation: Representatives Frederica Wilson of Florida’s 24th District, Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida’s 25th District; Carlos Curbelo of Florida’s 26th District; and Lleana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida’s 27th District.

February is African American History Month, and video profiles of six African American federal judges offer a dramatic view of the changes experienced by individuals and a nation during the Civil Rights era.

During the 12-month period ending December 31, 2014, 936,795 cases were filed in federal bankruptcy courts, down from the 1,071,932 bankruptcy cases filed in calendar year 2013—a 12.6 percent drop in filings.

U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, whose family fled to America from South Vietnam, is the subject of a newly released edition of Pathways to the Bench, a U.S. Courts video series in which federal judges talk about challenges that helped prepare them to serve justice.

Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway of the District of Hawaii administered the Oath of Office to Congressman Mark Takai of Hawaii on January 16, 2015, in front of nearly 400 well-wishers at the federal courthouse in Honolulu.