United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. courts of appeals, and it covers only one district court: the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It meets at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, DC.

The D.C. Circuit's status and prestige among American federal courts is generally considered to be second only to the U.S. Supreme Court. Its geographic jurisdiction contains the U.S. Capitol and the headquarters of many U.S. federal executive departments and government agencies. As a result, the D.C. Circuit tends to be the main federal appellate court for issues of American administrative law, constitutional law, and other related areas. Four of the nine current Supreme Court justices were previously judges on the D.C. Circuit: Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Past justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Warren E. Burger, Fred M. Vinson, and Wiley Blount Rutledge also served as judges on the D.C. Circuit before their appointments to the Supreme Court.

Because the D.C. Circuit does not represent any state, confirmation of nominees can be procedurally and practically easier than for nominees to the Courts of Appeals for the other geographical districts, as home-state senators have historically been able to hold up confirmation through the blue slip process.

Chiefs
When Congress established this court in 1893 as the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, it had a chief justice, and the other judges were called associate justices, which was similar to the structure of the Supreme Court. The chief justiceship was a separate seat: the president would appoint the chief justice, and that person would stay chief justice until he left the court.

On June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 869 and 62 Stat. 985 became law. These acts made the chief justice a chief judge. In 1954, another law, 68 Stat. 1245, clarified what was implicit in those laws: that the chief judgeship was not a mere renaming of the position but a change in its status that made it the same as the chief judge of other inferior courts.

Succession of seats
The court has eleven seats for active judges after the elimination of Seat 8 under the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007. The seat that was originally the chief justiceship is numbered as Seat 1; the other seats are numbered in order of their creation. If seats were established simultaneously, they are numbered in the order in which they were filled. Judges who retire into senior status remain on the bench but leave their seat vacant. That seat is filled by the next circuit judge appointed by the president.