News and Announcements

Bankruptcy filings fell again for the 12-month period ending Dec. 31, 2021. A steady decline in filings has continued since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

As a teenager, Taisha Sturdivant was a bright kid who loved to read, yet her circumstances conspired to limit her future prospects. With the help of mentors and her own determination, she enrolled in an interactive fellowship with the Massachusetts federal court. Today, she is a successful real estate attorney specializing in affordable housing.

After more than a year of working to conduct justice in the face of a global pandemic, federal courts are being buffeted by omicron, whose rapid speed of transmission is making jury trials more vulnerable to COVID-19 interruptions.

The Judiciary sent letters to Congress this week urging lawmakers to defer action on pending bills affecting the federal courts’ electronic records management system until a “meaningful two-way dialogue” between the two branches of government can take place to resolve important concerns.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has issued his 2021 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.

To mark the anniversary of the Bill of Rights, on Dec. 15, Vietnam War protester Mary Beth Tinker Tinker will participate virtually in a ceremony prior to installing the armband in its temporary home in the Judicial Learning Center at the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in St. Louis. 

A bill to protect federal judges and their families from threats and attacks has advanced to the full Senate, and a U.S. district judge from New Jersey, whose son was slain by an angry litigant, urged Congress to pass the legislation without delay.

Judge Ada Brown is the first woman of African American heritage to serve as a district judge in the Northern District of Texas, in the over 140-year history of the court. She also is one of just a handful of individuals with Native American ancestry to ever become a federal judge.

In the U.S. district courts, filings of civil cases involving insurance typically have surged following weather catastrophes. Over the past 20 years, devastating hurricanes and severe floods have resulted in the Eastern District of Louisiana processing the most insurance cases of any district court.

Judge J. Clifford Wallace, a federal judge who has advised judiciaries in more than 70 countries during his half-century on the bench, has been selected to receive the 2022 Susan and Carl Bolch Jr. Prize for the Rule of Law. He will be honored during a ceremony in San Diego on March 18, 2022.