Unlike the Supreme Court, where one justice is specifically nominated to be chief, the office of chief judge rotates among the circuit judges. Vacancies and pending nominations SeatĬhief judges have administrative responsibilities with respect to their circuits, and preside over any panel on which they serve unless the circuit justice (i.e., the Supreme Court justice responsible for the circuit) is also on the panel. The Tenth Circuit was assigned a total of four judgeships. Three additional judgeships were authorized and the sitting circuit judges were reassigned according to their residence. Ĭongress passed a statute that placed Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas in the Eighth Circuit and created a Tenth Circuit that included Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma. With the judges and bar of the existing Eighth Circuit for Newton's bill and little opposition to dividing the circuit, lawmakers focused on providing for more judgeships and meeting places of the circuit courts of appeals in their deliberations. An alternate proposal divided the northern from the southern states.
A bill by Representative Walter Newton would separate the circuit's eastern and western states. The House of Representatives considered two proposals to divide the existing Eighth Circuit. The original plan had sprung from an American Bar Association committee in 1925 and would have changed the composition of all but two circuits. Ĭhief Justice William Howard Taft suggested the reorganization of the Eighth Circuit Court in response to widespread opposition in 1928 to a proposal to reorganize the nation's entire circuit structure. The Eighth Circuit encompassed 13 states and had become the largest in the nation.
Between 18, twelve new states had entered the Union and been incorporated into the Eighth and Ninth Circuits. Post Office and Courthouse, as it appeared around 1916.Ĭongress created a new judicial circuit in 1929 to accommodate the increased caseload in the federal courts. It is one of thirteen United States courts of appeals and has jurisdiction over 560,625 square miles, or roughly one seventh of the country's land mass. The court is composed of twelve active judges and is based at the Byron White U.S.
These districts were part of the Eighth Circuit until 1929. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (in case citations, 10th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: