Each state (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) has a separate landing page within the U.S. District Courts section of the website. The landing pages have links to six or seven types of content: Judges, Legislative History, Authorized Judgeships, Succession Charts, Judicial District Organization (for states with more than one district), Meeting Places, and Records and Bibliography. A brief guide to these categories of information follows.

Judges:

These pages contain a single list of all judges who have served on the district courts of the state, separate lists of judges for each individual district (in multi-district states), and lists of chief judges.

Legislative History:

The legislative history pages contain dates, citations, and brief descriptions of federal statutes pertaining to the district courts within a particular state.  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 judicial districts, the assignment of those districts to judicial circuits, the authorization of new judgeships for each district, and the occasional transfer of judgeships between districts.

Authorized Judgeships:

Since the establishment of the federal courts in 1789, Congress has set the number of seats for each federal court. (The District of New York, still two years away from being split into Northern and Southern Districts, became the first district to have more than one authorized judgeship in 1812.) The authorized judgeship pages display charts that show the number of judgeships each district had at any given time as well as the statutory authority for those judgeships. The charts also distinguish between permanent and temporary judgeships (see the explanation of temporary judgeships below). It is important to note that judgeships are vacant for varying lengths of time after a judge leaves the bench but before a successor is appointed. The number of authorized judgeships, therefore, does not necessarily represent the number of judges serving at that time. The succession charts, described below, are a better source for that information. The Authorized Judgeships pages also contain charts showing numbers of authorized U.S. bankruptcy judge and U.S. magistrate judge positions.

Succession Charts:

The succession chart for each judicial district 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 district to another within the same state) are explained in footnotes. The Legislative History, Authorized Judgeships, and Succession Charts pages can be read in conjunction to provide a complete historical picture of a court’s size and membership over time.

Judicial District Organization:

For states that had more than one judicial district at any time in their history, charts are provided showing dates and statutory citations for congressional alterations to the districts and the precise composition of each district after a change was made. In most cases, Congress defined judicial districts as consisting of certain counties, although other geographic criteria were used in some instances. Districts were periodically reorganized, with some counties moving from one district to another. These changes were most extensive when Congress established an additional judicial district for the state.

Meeting Places:

Congressional statutes authorize specific locations where district courts may be held (interactive maps of federal court authorized meeting places can be seen here). The lists on these pages show, for each judicial district, the cities Congress authorized as district court meeting places and the years each city was so authorized. On occasion, a meeting place was transferred from one district to another in the same state as a result of a district reorganization. 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 each district court’s original records in the regional facilities of the National Archives as well as a list of books and articles pertaining to that specific court.

A Note on “Temporary” Judgeships:

At times, Congress has created “temporary” judgeships for the U.S. district courts (and, on rare occasions, for the U.S. courts of appeals). The term “temporary” may cause confusion when applied to a judgeship on an Article III court, where judges serve with tenure during good behavior. It is the increase in the court’s membership, and not the judge appointed to the new seat, that is temporary.

While the provisions for individual temporary judgeships have varied over time, Congress has generally authorized an additional judgeship for a district while specifying that a future vacancy—in the particular judgeship then created or, more frequently, on the court in general—will not be filled. These vacancies have most often been defined as the next one to occur or the next to occur after a certain number of years has passed from the date the statute was enacted or the new judgeship was filled. On occasion, Congress has passed a new statute extending the temporary judgeship’s duration or converting it to a permanent position (effectively removing the prohibition on filling a vacancy imposed by the original statute). Otherwise, when the specified vacancy has occurred, it has not been filled, and the court’s authorized membership has returned to its previous level. On the authorized judgeship charts referenced above, these different outcomes are denoted by “temporary judgeship made permanent” and “temporary judgeship expired.”

As an example, a 1922 statute authorized temporary judgeships for several districts, including the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The statute provided that the first vacancy in all but one of the positions being created to occur more than two years from the date of enactment would not be filled. Judge Charles McKeehan was appointed to the new seat in 1923 and died in 1925. Because more than two years had elapsed from the enactment of the statute creating his position, no successor to Judge McKeehan was appointed. The authorized size of the court, which had increased to three seats when the 1922 statute was enacted, returned to two upon Judge McKeehan’s death.

The 1922 act also authorized a temporary judgeship for the District of Arizona and Judge Fred Jacobs was appointed to the new seat in 1923. In 1935, when Judge Jacobs was still on the bench, Congress passed a new statute making the temporary judgeship permanent by authorizing future vacancies in some of the 1922 positions, including this one, to be filled. When Judge Jacobs took senior status in 1936, therefore, a successor was promptly appointed, and the authorized size of the court remained at two seats.

Another variation, albeit a much rarer one, stemming from the same statute can be seen in the Eastern District of Michigan. In 1923, Judge Charles Simons was appointed to the new judgeship authorized by the 1922 statute. When he vacated the seat to take a position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1932, his vacancy was not eligible to be filled. The size of the court’s authorized membership, which then stood at four seats, was reduced to three. When Congress enacted the 1935 statute, however, it authorized not only the filling of future vacancies in some of the 1922 positions, but several already existing vacancies, including this one, as well. Thus, while the district’s temporary increase in size had expired in 1932, the fourth seat was reauthorized and made permanent in 1935, and a successor to Judge Simons was appointed in 1936.