Political Quotes

“today, I join with Senator Hatch to introduce a bipartisan bill to address the resource needs of our men and women on the Federal judiciary and people around the country by authorizing additional U.S. courts of appeals and district court judgeships. It has been 18 years since the last time a comprehensive judgeship bill was enacted to address the growth in the workload of the Federal judiciary by adding new Federal judgeships. That legislation established 11 additional circuit court judgeships and 61 permanent and 13 temporary district court judgeships. Since 1990, case filings in our Federal appellate courts have increased by 55 percent and case filings on our district courts have risen by 29 percent. Without a comprehensive bill, Congress has proceeded to authorize only a few additional district court judgeships and extend temporary judgeships when it could. For instance, in 2002 we were able to provide for 15 new judgeships in the Department of Justice authorization bill. However no additional circuit court judgeships have been created since 1990 despite their increased workload. In 2006, the weighted number of filings in district courts, which takes into account an assessment of case complexity, were 464 per judgeship, well above the Judicial Conference's standard. The same year, the national average circuit court caseload per three-judge panel approached the record number of 1,230 cases, recorded a year earlier.”