United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. courts of appeals, and it covers only the United States [District Court for the District of Columbia|U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia]. It meets at the E. [Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse] in Washington, DC.
The D.C. Circuit is often considered to be second only to the U.S. Supreme Court in status and prestige, and it is sometimes unofficially termed "the second highest court in the land," although it is officially no higher than the other twelve Courts of Appeals. Because its jurisdiction covers the District of Columbia, it tends to be the main federal appellate court for issues of U.S. administrative law and constitutional law. Four of the nine current Supreme Court justices were previously judges on the D.C. Circuit: Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Past justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Warren E. Burger, Fred M. Vinson, and Wiley Blount Rutledge also served on the D.C. Circuit before their appointments to the Supreme Court.
Because the D.C. Circuit does not represent any U.S. states, confirming D.C. Circuit nominees can be procedurally and practically easier than confirming nominees to other circuits, because home-state senators have historically been able to hold up confirmation through the blue slip process.
Current composition of the court
List of former judges
Chiefs
When Congress established this court in 1893 as the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, it had a chief justice, and the other judges were called associate justices, which was similar to the structure of the Supreme Court. The chief justiceship was a separate seat: the president would appoint the chief justice, and that person would stay chief justice until he left the court.On June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 869 and 62 Stat. 985 became law. These acts made the chief justice a chief judge. In 1954, another law, 68 Stat. 1245, clarified what was implicit in those laws: that the chief judgeship was not a mere renaming of the position but a change in its status that made it the same as the chief judge of other inferior courts.