The Judicial Conference is a process mandated by Congress and led by justices throughout the federal courts system to consider and implement administrative changes to federal court procedures. On March 15, 2024 the organization issued a policy aimed at minimizing or eliminating "court shopping", the process by which lawyers carefully shop for plaintiffs then carefully curate a set of facts affecting those plaintiffs then carefully identify a judicial district and a judge likely to rule in the plaintiff's favor. In recent years, this strategy has been consistently used not just in the interest of a single plaintiff but in order to drive appeals all the way to the Supreme Court to alter existing, long-standing precedents or create brand new law.
The actual directive from the organization was published online and is available here:
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24483622/judicial-conference-policy.pdfThe essence of the directive is quoted below:
District courts should apply district-wide assignment to:
a. civil actions seeking to bar or mandate statewide enforcement of a state law, including a rule, regulation, policy, or order of the executive branch or a state agency, whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief; and
b. civil actions seeking to bar or mandate nationwide enforcement of a federal law, including a rule, regulation, policy, or order of the executive branch or a federal agency. whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.
In slightly clearer language, the directive is aimed at trying to maximize the randomness in assignment of a judge for a case by using the largest possible pool of judges associated with the largest logical district territory that will hear the case. Current practices start at a "division" layer below the district. Many of these divisions only have one or two judges. If a plaintiff and his lawyers believe a particular judge will rule in their favor, they can file the case in that division and virtually guarantee they will get the judge they want.
This story was interesting because one of the first references to it was in a story on Slate whose title implied this reflected Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' attempt to crack down on this abuse of process that has been particularly popular with MAGA types going after abortion law and similar hot button topics. Roberts in theory provides top level direction to the organization. Here's the link to the Slate story:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/john-roberts-matthew-kacsmaryk-nationwide-injunctions-judge-shopping.htmlDropped the Hammer did he?
It's more odd to me that Roberts would be described as being so fed up with this manipulation of the courts, as if this is the only issue affecting the integrity of decisions coming from the judicial system. There are multiple issues sitting directly on Roberts' own bench in the form of Justices with glaring conflicts of interest who refuse to recuse from landmark cases directly impacting those conflicts. Roberts hasn't just remained silent on those issues, in the case of the leak of the Dobbs verdict weeks before the final release, Roberts directed a charade of an investigation that lasted eight and a half months, claimed to interview eighty people who had access to the draft yet concluded the perpetrator could not be identified beyond a preponderance of doubt and might never be known.
When the judicial system is being stressed as thoroughly as it has been for the last decade, every improvement to process is welcome but additional opportunities exist. Many of them are being tolerated by the man thought to be in charge of eliminating them.
WTH
