Each judicial circuit has a separate landing page within the U.S. Courts of Appeals section of the website. The landing pages have links to six types of content: Judges, Legislative History, Succession Chart, Circuit Composition, Meeting Places, and Records and Bibliography. A brief guide to these categories of information follows.

Judges:

These pages contain lists all judges and chief judges who have served on the U.S. court of appeals for the circuit.

Legislative History:

The legislative history pages contain dates, citations, and brief descriptions of federal statutes pertaining to the U.S. court of appeals for the circuit.  The citations are to U.S. Statutes at Large; for example, “68 Stat. 8” is a citation to volume 68, page 8 of that publication (for more information on judicial statutes, see Spotlight on Judicial History: The Codification of Federal Statutes on the Judiciary). The statutes cited on these pages relate mostly to the establishment of the circuit, the assignment of states or districts to the circuit (or from the circuit to another), and the authorization of new judgeships for the circuit. The legislative history pages also contain charts showing the number of judgeships Congress authorized for the circuit over time.

Succession Chart:

The succession chart for each judicial circuit shows the date each judgeship was established for the court along with a citation to the authorizing statute. Each column represents a separate seat on the court, illustrating which judges served in that seat, their years of active service (for exact dates, please see the judge’s entry in the Biographical Directory), and the order of succession. The charts enable one to determine which judges served together on the court at any given time. Unique circumstances pertaining to specific judgeships (for example, being transferred from one circuit to another) are explained in footnotes.

Circuit Composition:

The circuit composition charts display dates, citations and descriptions of congressional statutes that made changes to which judicial districts were assigned to a circuit. The composition of the entire circuit is shown each time a change was made.

Meeting Places:

Congressional statutes authorize specific locations where courts of appeals may be held (interactive maps of federal court authorized meeting places can be seen here). The lists on these pages show, for each circuit, the cities Congress authorized as court meeting places and the years each city was so authorized. Courts did not necessarily meet in each authorized location in every year of its existence as a meeting place.

Records and Bibliography:

These pages show the location of the original records of each court of appeals in the regional facilities of the National Archives as well as a list of books and articles pertaining to that specific court.