Circuit Justices
Every federal court of appeals has a member of the Supreme Court allotted to it: thirteen circuits, nine justices, and who has which.
The Court shares its members out among the circuits by order, and the order in force took effect on September 28, 2022. With thirteen circuits and nine justices the arithmetic cannot come out even. John G. Roberts Jr. holds three (the District of Columbia, Fourth and Federal Circuits), Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh two each, and the other six have one each. Each circuit below carries its number and its justice; the heavy lines are where one circuit ends and the next begins.
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Every circuit and its justice
What a circuit justice does
The assignment is made under 28 U.S.C. § 42: the Chief Justice and the associate justices “shall from time to time be allotted as circuit justices among the circuits by order of the Supreme Court,” and “a justice may be assigned to more than one circuit, and two or more justices may be assigned to the same circuit.” The first clause of that second sentence is what lets nine justices cover thirteen circuits.
What the assignment decides is whose desk an application reaches first. Under the Court’s Rule 22, which governs applications to a single justice, “an application shall be addressed to the Justice allotted to the Circuit from which the case arises.” A request for a stay or for bail from a case in Texas goes first to Samuel A. Alito Jr.; one from California, to Elena Kagan. The justice need not decide it alone: “a Justice to whom an application for a stay or for bail is submitted may refer it to the Court for determination.” The same rule sends applications arising from the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to the Chief Justice.
The pairing of justices and circuits goes back at least to 1869. When Congress set the Court at nine that year it was, in the words of the Federal Judicial Center’s legislative history, “one for each of the judicial circuits.” There are thirteen circuits now and still nine justices. How the nine seats came down to the present bench is on Seat by Seat; how the judges of these circuits rank from left to right is on The Circuit Bench.
How this is built
The allotment is the Court’s own, as printed on its circuit assignments page, effective September 28, 2022. Which state lies in which circuit is 28 U.S.C. § 41, which names thirteen circuits and puts Puerto Rico in the First, the Virgin Islands in the Third and Guam in the Ninth; those three are drawn in boxes below the map. The section still lists the District of the Canal Zone in the Fifth Circuit, which has no shape to draw. It does not name the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa, and neither is drawn. The boundaries are the Census Bureau’s, at a scale of one to ten million, simplified for the screen.
An allotment stands until the Court makes another, and this page follows the Court’s.
13 circuits · 9 justices · allotment effective September 28, 2022.