Talk:United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit

Split in judges table
I split the existing table into two: current judges and former judges. This allows us to remove extraneous column headings (i.e. "reason for termination" for active judges). I also added "Title" to the active judge list and birth/death years.

Let me know if you like this change. If so, I'll begin work on the other circuits. DLJessup, I noticed that you have some good info on your user page. --PrinceValium 10:46, 15 May 2005 (UTC)


 * A few comments in reply to the previous post:
 * Let me apologize for not replying to the above post until now. I have been away from my computer for more than a week due to some rather major changes in my life; this will be my first action on Wikipedia since May 13.
 * About the info on my user page: I am using my user page as a staging area for the tables to be added to the pages for the various circuit courts.  Once I get a table finished, I will move the table into the appropriate page.
 * I liked the addition of the lifespan column to the judges table.
 * I am not in favor of splitting the judges table. It seems to me that Wikipedia should seek to be as timeless as possible, and every use of "current" makes the article appear more dated.  In fact, the only reason I had not totally eliminated the "Current judges" section was that I was hesitant to blow away the duty station information.
 * That being said, if the table has to be split, I think that this is almost the ideal way to do it. The only problems are, again, the elimination of the duty station information, and the fact that the split separates the "Table Notes" from the first of the two tables.
 * &mdash; DLJessup 03:11, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply.
 * There are two reasons why I'm in favor of splitting the tables:
 * First, we can include columns that are relevant to current judges but not former judges (and vice versa). There's no need to waste valuable real estate by including a column (i.e. "reason for termination") that will be blank for every active judge.
 * Second, information on the current judges is more important to the reader than information on the historical judges, so the list of current judges should be at the top of the page. Reversing the chronological order would be one option, but any list of the current judges of the court, by custom, begins with the Chief Judge and continues with the active judges in order of seniority. The bullet list, as we had it before, is redundant if we also include the same info in the table. While I share your concern about making the article dated, we would need to be generally vigilant over these articles in any event, so as to add new judges as they become confirmed.
 * I'll put the duty station info back in the table for the current judges (replacing the state column).
 * Since the table note for the senior circuit judges will be identical on each circuit page, would it make sense to convert Senior Circuit Judge into a separate article, citing relevant statutory provisions? We could then construct a similar one for  Circuit Judge.
 * Can the other "table note" (the statutory authority for each seat on the court) be converted into a separate heading? I'm not sure why this needs to be an annotation to the table, and would solve the problem you indicated.
 * Also, where are you getting the data for the seat numbers? They are not on the judges' profiles on fjc.gov, as far as I know. If these numbers are not "official" we'd probably need an annotation to that effect. I like having the data in the table, though.
 * Thanks for your consideration of my suggestions. I'm a relative newbie to Wikipedia, and I don't want to step on any toes; moreover, I want to preserve the hard work you put into constructing the tables for the other circuits. That said, I'd like to participate in the most helpful way I can in getting the pages for the various U.S. courts up and running.
 * --PrinceValium 04:25, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Judge wikilinks for chief and succession tables
In each of the “United States Court of Appeals for the X Circuit” articles, there are multiple links to the biography of each judge: one in the current and former judges tables, one in the succession tables, and possibly one in the chiefs table. Wikipedia's guidelines frown on redundant wikilinks in the same article. Moreover, we have had a few synchronization issues recently in which an editor will update only one of the wikilinks to match with a newly created article, leaving the others as redlinks. Thus I plan to eliminate the wikilinks in the succession and chiefs tables. Please let me know if you have an issue with this.

— DLJessup (talk) 23:39, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Of course now all the extra linking of the state abbreviations looks out of place, should we delink those too? NoSeptember  20:49, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me


 * — DLJessup (talk) 20:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

PR state jurisdiction
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Puerto_Rico, the first circuit hasn't had jurisdiction since 1961. Is this correct? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.236.160.78 (talk • contribs) 05:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's true but not very significant. The First Circuit doesn't have general appellate jurisdiction over, say, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, either. The First Circuit reviews decisions from the federal courts within its bounds, including the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. jhawkinson (talk) 22:32, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Table standardization
Please note and contribute to this discussion. Billyboy01 (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Circuit Justices
Neither the 'history', the 'article' nor anywhere in wikispace (that I've looked so far) mentions the present or previous 'Justice Circuit Assignments'. This material should probably be included in a separate 'article' with intro and links to the several courts and justices 'articles'. There is an extensive and complicated history on this, considering all the justices there have been and how the compositions of the federal judicial circuits have changed. Ex: After Associate Justice Alito's appointment, circuits were assigned as follows[2]: For the D.C. Circuit, John G. Roberts, Jr. For the First Circuit, David H. Souter For the Second Circuit, Ruth Bader Ginsburg For the Third Circuit, David H. Souter For the Fourth Circuit, John G. Roberts, Jr. For the Fifth Circuit, Antonin G. Scalia For the Sixth Circuit, John Paul Stevens For the Seventh Circuit, John Paul Stevens For the Eighth Circuit, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. For the Ninth Circuit, Anthony M. Kennedy For the Tenth Circuit, Stephen G. Breyer For the Eleventh Circuit, Clarence Thomas For the Federal Circuit, John G. Roberts, Jr. I'm still trying to find out the assignments since Sotomayor was appointed.

This is a RFC. Mouselb (talk) 06:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)