The Federal Judicial Center has undertaken a long-term study of the impact of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) on the resources of the federal courts. The third interim report was delivered to the committee on April 16, 2007 for discussion at its April 19 meeting and reports on the results of statistical tests of the impact of CAFA on federal courts across the country.

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 permits attorneys to cite to federal courts of appeals their unpublished opinions issued 2007 or later. Unpublished opinions issued before 2007 may be cited to the courts if permitted by the courts' local rules. This document is a summary table of the federal courts of appeals' local rules on citations to their unpublished opinions issued before 2007. The table is reprinted at 241 F.R.D. 328 (2007).

When a United States senator asked the federal judiciary to look into sealed settlement agreements, the Civil Rules Advisory Committee asked the Federal Judicial Center to undertake a research effort to discover how often settlement agreements are sealed in federal court and under what circumstances. The Center learned that the sealing of settlement agreements in federal court is rare, and typically the only part of the court record kept secret by the sealing of a settlement agreement is the amount of settlement. This article describes how the Center developed its research project to address the senator's concerns.

From 81 Chicago-Kent Law Review, 439-62 (2006).

For the published results of the research project, see Sealed Settlement Agreements in Federal District Courts (2004).

The Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 authorizes any person to file a complaint alleging that a federal judge has engaged in conduct "prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts." The late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in 2004, responded to criticism from Congress and others about the way in which the Act had been implemented by appointing a committee led by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

The committee reviewed several groups of complaint dispositions, including a large sample from 2001-03, and concluded that overall the judiciary is implementing the Act as Congress intended; it also found, however, an unacceptably high number of problematic dispositions among the small number of complaints it examined that had received news coverage or congressional attention. In reviewing dispositions, the Committee developed and applied standards that take into account the value of protecting judicial independence in making decisions in a case.

The Federal Judicial Center is serving as a repository for the Committee's published report.

The report is also available at 239 Federal Rules Decisions 116.