 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. Welcome. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, a page of history is worth a volume of logic. And that is certainly true about the institutions of federal court governance. They evolved in response to changing conditions and changing perceptions of the needs of the courts. What follows is a short description of that evolution. To learn more about how these institutions evolved, start with two center publications, creating the federal judicial system and origins of the elements of federal court governance. If they're not in your office, visit the Federal Judicial History website on the center's homepage. In addition to those publications, the history website contains reference information about the history of the federal courts and the judges who have served on them since 1789. Thank you for watching. The circuits are as old as the federal judicial system. But for the first hundred years, the circuit served a purpose different from that it serves today. Today, the circuit is a unit of federal court governance. But from 1789 until 1891, when the Courts of Appeals were created, the circuit was the means for assigning duties to Supreme Court justices. Justices in those days had two jobs, as judges of the Supreme Court and as judges of the major trial courts, called circuit courts, which met in each district in the circuit. The judges were the resident district judge in a traveling Supreme Court justice. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created three circuits, the Eastern, Middle and Southern, each with two to five districts. The Supreme Court had six justices and two were assigned to each circuit. As the country expanded, Congress added circuits, assigned one justice to each circuit and increased the number of justices as it added circuits to serve a growing nation. By 1863, the Supreme Court had ten justices to serve ten circuits. Only the second circuit had the same configuration it has today. As the nation continued westward, Congress decided that it could not keep enlarging the Supreme Court. So it fixed the size of the Supreme Court at nine, same as today, and the number of circuits at nine. As the map shows, in 1866, the circuits looked roughly as they do today. Since then, Congress has created only two more regional circuits, the 10th in 1929 and the 11th in 1980, and in 1982 it created the Federal Circuit. In short, the circuits today, with varying sizes and reflecting regional traditions, are a product of historical evolution and changing needs. The same is true when we look at circuit councils. Congress created them in 1939, but to understand the events leading up to their creation, we begin with the 1891 statute creating the Courts of Appeals. Until 1891, the Federal Judiciary had two trial courts, District and Circuit, and one appeals court, the Supreme Court. After the Civil War, as the country's economy expanded, more and more cases flooded into the district courts and the circuit courts. And, unlike today, the Supreme Court had to hear all the cases appealed to it. So the court fell far behind in its work. In response, Congress passed the Everett's Act in 1891, named after its chief sponsor, Senator William Everett of New York. The Everett's Act created in each circuit three judge court of appeals to hear appeals from the district courts. The circuit courts were gradually eliminated, leaving the district courts as the only federal trial court. By creating a court of appeals in each circuit, the Everett's Act produced two changes. First, it created more appellate capacity, system-wide, allowing the Supreme Court gradually to become the source of national judicial policy it is today. Second, by creating courts of appeals in each circuit, a judicial hierarchy, it laid the basis for today's circuit governance system. Until 1891, the only institution that linked the federal judges in a circuit to one another were the Supreme Court Justices, and, after 1869, a single circuit judge in each circuit, who still visited the various districts to preside over trials in the circuit courts. After 1891, each circuit had a court with circuit-wide jurisdiction, and that court became the basis for circuit-wide administration. Enter William Howard Taft of Ohio. Taft had been the senior circuit judge, today we would say the chief judge, of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He went on to become Secretary of War, then President of the United States in 1909. After losing his bid for reelection, Taft joined the Yale Law School faculty, and went around the country speaking to bar groups about reforming the federal courts. When President Harding appointed him Chief Justice in 1921, Taft set about to put his plans into action by persuading Congress to create the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges, today's judicial conference of the United States. After its meeting in 1923, the conference members called on the president at the White House. The basic business of the conference at its annual meeting was for each senior circuit judge to describe the state of the dockets in his circuit's district courts, based on reports from the senior district judges. With that information, the conference would develop plans for temporary assignment of judges, other recommendations, and legislative proposals. In other words, as a member of the conference, each Chief Circuit Judge, like Chief Judge John Parker of the Fourth Circuit, had to keep tabs on the district courts in the circuit. Administration of the federal judiciary was taking shape. The conference was in place, and each court of appeals, led by the Chief Judge or Senior Circuit Judge, not only decided appeals from the district court, but oversaw the state of district court dockets. The Justice Department was the federal court's budget and personnel manager playing the role the administrative office plays now. In the 1930s, the conference of senior circuit judges, shown here with Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, pressed for a law to get the Justice Department out of the court's administration and create formal administrative structures within the circuits. The result was the Administrative Office Act of 1939. The Act did three things. First, it created a judicial council in each circuit in order, quoting now from the Act, that the work of the district courts shall be effectively and expeditiously transacted. The council members were the members of the court of appeals, formalizing the practice of appellate supervision that had developed. The councils would get the information they needed to supervise district court caseloads from the statistical reports of the newly created administrative office of the U.S. courts. Second, the 1939 Act created the administrative office to assume the Department of Justice's responsibilities for administering the judicial budget and personnel system. The administrative office was defunction, said Congress, under the direction and supervision of the conference. Some thought the Supreme Court should supervise the AO. No, said Chief Justice Hughes, better that the Supreme Court not get involved in administering the courts and that the AO be supervised by the conference, whose courts it would serve. Third, the law directed each circuit chief judge to convene an annual conference of judges and lawyers to devise means of improving judicial administration in the circuit. So in 1939, the structure of federal judicial administration took on a different look. The AO supplanted the Justice Department as the administrator of the courts. The conference acquired actual power through its supervision and direction of the administrative office. The responsibility for ensuring the effective administration of justice in each of the circuits was vested in the judicial councils. In annual circuit conferences could focus bench bar attention on judicial improvement. A lot has changed since 1939, in addition to the nomenclature. District judges are now members of the judicial conference and the circuit councils. The AO has been assigned greatly expanded responsibilities. In 1967, Congress created the Federal Judicial Center for Third Branch Education and Research. In 1972, it authorized the Chief Justice to appoint an administrative assistance, a recognition of the important administrative roles of the Chief Justice. Finally, in 1971, Congress authorized the councils to appoint circuit executives. Although Chief Justice Hughes had proposed circuit executives when the councils were created, the immediate impetus for the circuit executive office was the heavy increases in appellate case loads in the 1960s. From 1930 to 1960, appellate filings stayed roughly at the same level. But in the six years, from 1960 to 1966, filings nearly doubled. The 7,200 filings in 1966 were tiny compared to today's filings of some 50,000. But that sudden growth spurred in the 1960s and the realization it would continue led to many studies about how to enable the courts of appeals to handle their workload without a massive increase in judges. In this period emerged the idea of screening cases in order to reduce oral argument in limiting published opinions. Another idea emerged from a report prepared for the Judicial Conference in 1967 by retired AO Deputy Director Will Schaffroth, the idea of administrative assistance for the Chief Circuit judges of the busiest circuits, because these judges were spending up to half their time on administrative matters. In 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren submitted that recommendation and added that the need for assistance goes beyond the court of appeals. The circuit councils, he argued, with their complex managerial tasks must have the eyes, ears and expertise of management, which the expanding workloads of the circuits demand. When Warren Burger became Chief Justice in 1969, he endorsed the proposal. We must, he insisted, literally create the core of court administrators or court managers, and we must do so at once. In early 1971, Congress enacted a bill proposed by the Judicial Conference, authorizing the circuit councils to appoint circuit executives and setting out the range of duties they could perform. Our chart of federal judicial administration has become even more complex, with the addition at the national level of the FJC in 1967 and the position of administrative assistant to the Chief Justice in 1972. At the circuit level, the councils have changed in composition and gained staff assistance of circuit executives. The circuit conferences, however, are now optional affairs, both as to whether they should be held and whether judges must attend them. And finally, we should note that the district courts themselves have become sophisticated administrative operations. The federal courts today are organized and largely governed through circuits, which were created originally to assign trial court duties to Supreme Court justices. The Judicial Conference and circuit councils share governance authority because of efforts in the first half of the century to balance national and regional administration. The administrative office staffs the conference and provides administrative assistance to the courts, and the judicial center provides education and research. The circuit executives staff the councils stemming from the appellate revolution of the 1960s and the transformation of the idea of administrative assistance to Chief Judges to staff assistance to the councils. We certainly have not reached the end of the evolution of the federal court's administrative system. In fact, some aspects of the administrative system today may surely seem as strange to our descendants as some aspects of the administrative system of earlier years seem to us. The important point is, however, that responding to changing needs and conditions, these institutions will continue to evolve.