Judiciary News

Representatives of the federal Judiciary today asked Congress to provide $7.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2018 to fund the continuing operations of the judicial branch, as well as to enhance cybersecurity, adequately provide for funds for counsel for indigent defendants, and to ensure sufficient security at federal courthouses.

A recently enhanced database that houses information about civil and criminal federal cases dating to 1970 is now available to researchers and the public on the Federal Judicial Center’s website as part of a partnership with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

In the first months after Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Atsushi Wallace Tashima’s life wasn’t much different from that of other young Americans. Like others in his ethnically mixed Los Angeles neighborhood, Tashima’s family draped their windows at night, to protect against America’s new wartime enemies. But the Tashimas soon were branded, solely because of their ethnic heritage, as potential spies and saboteurs. By presidential order, 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were uprooted from their homes, and shipped off to internment camps.

In a concerted effort to make it easier for people to serve as jurors, the federal Judiciary is embracing technologies aimed at reducing wait times, paperwork, and trips to the courthouse.

The first week of May is Juror Appreciation Week. In observance of that event, two educational videos about federal jury service are available.

A decline in the number of federal prosecutions and in the severity of sentences for drug-related crime in recent years has resulted in a significant drop in the federal prison population, according to statistics from the Judiciary, the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC), and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

In 1903, the Wright Brothers’ made aviation history when they flew their airplane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They then made legal history in numerous federal patent lawsuits, raising fundamental questions about how far inventors can go in using patent law to ward off challengers.  

In calendar year 2016, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court denied 9 applications in full and 26 applications in part. Learn more about the 2016 Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on Activities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts.

Bankruptcy filings fell 4.7 percent for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2017, compared with the year ending March 31, 2016, according to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Warning that federal bankruptcy courts face a “debilitating workload crisis” in Delaware and eight other districts, the U.S. Judicial Conference has urged Congress to authorize four new bankruptcy judgeships and convert 14 temporary judgeships into permanent positions.

The history and workings of the U.S. court system can now be explored with a variety of easy-to-navigate and interactive tools available on the Federal Judicial Center’s revamped website. The site, which launched this week, is aimed at providing more information in engaging ways to judicial history buffs, academics and researchers, court personnel, and just about anyone with an interest in the Third Branch.

For its graduates, the Federal Probation and Pretrial Academy in Charleston, S.C., is often a life-changing experience. In this video, students and instructors discuss and also demonstrate the intensive new officer training that takes place at the academy, which covers everything from establishing meaningful relationships with defendants and offenders to responding to dangerous encounters.

When a defendant is convicted of a crime in federal court, he or she owes many debts to society. In addition to likely prison time, offenders may be required to pay thousands of dollars in restitution, fines, and special assessments after sentencing.

The Judicial Conference of the United States today agreed to recommend to Congress the creation of 57 new Article III judgeships in the courts of appeals and district courts. If an omnibus judgeship bill is enacted into law, it would be first new comprehensive judgeship legislation to take effect in more than 26 years.

The year 2016 was a time of innovation and progress at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO), the agency reported today in two releases detailing its activities and programs over the 12-month period.