Federal Trial and Appellate Judges: How Do They Differ?

Abstract

STUDENTS of the American judiciary have long been interested in identifying the qualities that go into the making of a good federal judge. Several analysts have gone so far as to report on the empirical similarities and differences between judges appointed by different presidential administrations. 1 Work in this genre has been limited, however, by the inherent difficulties of uncovering accurate and important data about the largely invisible federal judgeship appointees. One area which has gone relatively unexamined concerns the question of how federal trial and appellatejudges differ from each other when they are compared and contrasted in aggregate analysis. Conventional wisdom suggests that the more prestigious U.S. Courts of Appeals will be staffed by judges who are better trained and more qualified in several respects than their counterparts on the U.S. District Courts. Indeed, such a perspective appears to be shared by the American Bar Association itself as evidenced by the different evaluative criteria employed by the ABA's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary when it reports its views on candidates for the different levels of the federal bench.

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