Talk:List of United States federal judges by longevity of service

Out of Date???
This information might be out of date; I am in the process of adding three judges from Florida, but I don't have the time or ability to update this page further without assistance. Frank0051 (talk) 01:38, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Information about the dates of service for federal judges is generally available at the website of the Federal Judicial Center - . Cheers! bd2412  T 03:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Based on my use of that site, one would need to look at each and every judge rather than having some pre-formed list to use. As I said, I don't have the time or ability to update this page without further assistance. I added 4 judges from a combination of all the Florida District Courts and the Central District of California. There are 89 other districts, plus 13 circuits. That is a great deal of work for any one individual. Frank0051 (talk) 17:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be that hard. By looking at the individual lists of appointees by president, it is pretty easy to figure out who were the longest-serving appointees of each president. We know that there are no more Eisenhower appointees serving, and that (at this time) no one appointed by President Ford or anyone to come after him would meet the criteria of being on this list. Therefore, the only judges we need to look at for the moment are the handful of still-serving Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon appointees. bd2412  T 19:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see, there is an advanced search http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/research_categories.html. Well,  I have to update the List of Florida's Tallest buildings and then I will slowly jump  on this. Frank0051 (talk) 19:46, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have run into another problem. Frederick Jacob Reagan Heebe, John P. Fullam and Alexander Harvey II are listed as active Senior in FJC, but on their respective Court's wikipage they are listed as Senior Judges that are inactive. Should they be added to the list? Frank0051 (talk) 21:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * They are technically still holding the office of federal judge, and can become active, hear cases, and hand down decisions, until such time as they die or resign the bench entirely. bd2412  T 21:24, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have added the sitting judges for LBJ and will finish up Nixon today. But, I have been searching by appointing President and still sitting...however, what if someone resigned in the past couple of years? That individual could have reached 40 years of search, but be excluded by my search. It would seem you would still need some way to search by term of service, but I haven't been able to figure out a way to do that. Frank0051 (talk) 22:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The best way to do that I can think of is to go to our own lists (like List of federal judges appointed by Richard Nixon) and sort them in order of when each judge left the bench. bd2412  T 22:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, good to know. Well, I got through sitting Nixon Judges through Engel. Unfortunately there are a lot more judges than I thought, so I'm calling it quits for today. I might pick it up a little later in the week and finish the sitting Nixon judges. Frank0051 (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, you're making this a great and complete article. I will try and pick up some too. Cheers! bd2412  T 23:44, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Default sort
These lists should definitely be sorted by total service, not total active service. As it stands, it doesn't make sense at all. This is a list of all judges who served on a federal level for forty years, regardless of whether that was with active" or "senior" status. A judge with senior status is still an active judge (and thus the caption accompanying the picture of Henry Potter is incorrect). There is no necessary difference between the service, especially when judges run as low as they currently are. If there is an objection because the senior status judges hear fewer cases, there is no comparison between a current judge and Potter or Cranch's workload. As it is sorted now, it might as well be a list of judges who served at least twelve years, so I really do believe that the sorting precedence needs to be changes. Star Garnet (talk) 04:15, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That would make the longest-serving federal judge Joseph William Woodrough - who performed no judicial functions for the last sixteen years of his tenure as a judge. The degree to which a judge in senior status acts as a judge is too much of a roll of the dice for my comfort. bd2412  T 04:21, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If the default order is to remain as it is now, the article name must be changed, as the title specifies "federal judges", not "active federal judges". A senior judge is still a judge, nor does it particularly matter what any judge's workload is for this article. Star Garnet (talk) 01:36, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The lists are sortable, so if you want to see the judges in order of total service, all you need to do is click the button on the top of that row. However, I will grant that it works both ways, so if you want to switch the order, go ahead. Cheers! bd2412  T 01:49, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

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Some Edits That Need To Be Made
Is there anyway anyone can edit the changes I am about to write about. I would do it, but I don't know how to do it. R. James Harvey did not end senior status service on December 4, 2017 like it says on the United States district court section. The total combined service section lists him correctly as being in active senior status service, but not the United States district court section. There is one judge that needs to be added on the total combined service section and the United States district court section. The judge is John Francis Grady, who was appointed by Gerald Ford, and many reports claim he retired. The Federal Judicial Center does not list him as retired, and when I emailed them about this, they said that most likely he went on inactive senior status, not retirement like many reports have said. They told me they would have gotten a notification if he had retired. His profile is on the Federal Judicial Center, and it doesn't mention him as retired. He started his judicial service on November 21, 1975 and he should be on the total combined service section and the United States district court section. I do not know how to make these changes, and if someone could do it for me that would be really helpful.Ameet12345 (talk) 02:29, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I believe that news coverage of Harold R. Medina's ceasing to do judicial work in 1980 indicated that he left open the possibility of returning if needed so should he not have been listed as remaining an (inactive) Senior Judge?

Breyer and other Justices
I just got into a little edit war on this. There was no reason to include John Paul Stevens falling short of 40 years of active status if the inclusion of Breyer (reaches 41 years in December), Ginsburg (got over 40 years before she died), and Kennedy (43) (never mind Field who only hit 40 including service on state courts) is debarred. Hardly any of the 40-year-active judges spent any time at all on the SCOTUS.96.250.80.27 (talk) 05:59, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Capping list length
Do you have any good ideas of how to cap this list length? The combined list has grown from 115 to 287 in less than a decade, and there are 138 currently serving Reagan appointees that aren't on the list yet. I think it's clear that using an arbitrary 40-year cutoff isn't sustainable. Perhaps top 50 or 100 overall, and top 50 for each of the three levels? And should there be separate lists for active and total service? Both are notable, and a capped list would cut off most of the longest-tenured by active service, even though active service is what most sources would refer to. As of August 20, there will be 531 lines of judges on the page as it's set up. Eight lists of 50 would cap it at 400, while two lists of 100 and six lists of 50 would cap it at 500. Star Garnet (talk) 07:42, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking that we raise the minimum so that it covers everyone with either 40 years of active service or 50 years of total service, which would trim the list mightily. We might separately list all judges with more than 40 years of total service appointed before 1900, when a term of that length was unusual and remarkable. BD2412  T 16:00, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Actually...if you sort the district judges by active service,
 * 10 of the 17 judges who served longer than current active leader Hinojosa
 * were appointed between 1801 and 1875!
 * 108.29.145.226 (talk) 22:19, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Separate list based exclusively upon duration of active service

 * I was thinking when I had a look (a few days ago now) that there should be a wholly separate list added to the site of judges with longest active service.
 * A precise rank of longest active service would be essential for such a list. Although the existing table allows determination of rank of longest active service, it requires counting by the reader for use and after the few judges with very longest active service becomes too cumbersome for comfortable calculation.
 * 35 years would be ample qualification for a list solely based on duration of active service, and maybe even 30 years active service would not be too much. Luokehao (talk) 02:41, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There are certainly a lot of ambiguities over the years as the statuses developed and the de facto vs. de jure issues where someone is constitutionally still a judge and in practice never doing any more judicial work.Some "senior judges" are very active and others completely inactive,while the title "retired judge" was used for what is now called a "senior judge" until 1958 but is now used for someone who has resigned completely and is no longer considered a senior judge (unlike the senior judges who may be just as completely inactive as judges).
 * 108.29.145.226 (talk) 07:31, 6 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Certainly the recordholders for various circuits (covering only circuit judges) are often people who have not reached the 40-year list overall:
 * Emile Henry Lacombe (2nd circuit)
 * J. Harvie Wilkinson (4th circuit)*
 * Don Albert Pardee (5th circuit)
 * Frank Easterbrook (7th circuit)*
 * Walter Henry Sanborn (8th circuit)
 * William B. Gilbert (9th circuit)
 * Alfred P. Murrah (10th circuit)
 * Karen L. Henderson (D.C. Circuit)*
 * Pauline Newman (Federal Circuit)*
 * asterisked judges are currently serving and may make it to 40
 * 108.29.145.226 (talk) 06:12, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Getting close to 300 total judges (1984 appointees will do it this year) so should a top-300 cutoff be introduced? -- 71.105.190.227 (talk) 18:52, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of having a separate list of longest-serving active judges, and then raising the threshold here for total service to some higher number of years. However, a list of 300 is not that long. BD2412  T 18:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
 * There are only 39 judges who have clocked 40 years of active service so an active-only list would likely have an easier cutoff than the existing 40 even if a total-service list had the threshhold increased.71.105.190.227 (talk) 07:42, 5 March 2024 (UTC)