HomeCrimeFederal judiciary issues new policy on 'judge shopping'

Federal judiciary issues new policy on ‘judge shopping’

Drew Tipton, Ken Paxton

U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton (L) (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas), Ken Paxton (R) (via Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In a significant move by the policymaking body of the federal court system, the Judicial Conference of the United States announced Tuesday that it was taking steps to curb the kind of “judge shopping” aimed at obtaining sweeping injunctions from friendly one-judge divisions on major issues.

Although the announcement suggested years-old bipartisan worries of rampant “judge shopping” in patent cases was what first shined a light on the issue, the Court Administration and Case Management Committee later uncovered that such legal gamesmanship was affecting the federal civil courts more broadly, whether in bankruptcy proceedings or otherwise.

Specifically, the Judicial Conference wants to prevent litigants from bring civil cases to judges they believe will sign off on requests for declaratory judgments “and/or any form of injunctive relief” no matter how sweeping. In other words, case assignments on such matters must actually be randomly determined from a pool of judges in a district, likely meaning that there will be fewer examples of cases heading to the U.S. Supreme Court just to be overturned at a later date.

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