Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, courts from Vermont to Iowa, Michigan to Minnesota, and Guam to Puerto Rico have suspended jury trials and put restrictions on in-person proceedings. But as the quarantine drags on, the U.S. judicial system has been forced to adapt. And this means moving cases off the docket and into the virtual courtroom. New York state courts, for example, have expanded their virtual court proceedings beyond essential cases and emergency matters in an effort to reduce the backlog. The Supreme Court, too, has indicated that the justices will begin hearing oral arguments by telephone for their May term on a limited number of previously postponed cases.
Other federal courts, particularly circuit courts, have reacted similarly. Judge Jennifer Elrod of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said in an interview recently: “We are adapting, like others, to different ways of communicating. We have recently decided to forgo our en banc oral arguments in May and are going to have the lawyers submit answers [electronically] to written questions.”
It is a fun bit of linguistic irony that the circuit court system has once again been moved to operate on a cluster of circuits, albeit electronic ones. “Circuit courts” take their name from their operation: historically, the practice of having itinerant judges travel around regions of the country in a set path, a “circuit,” to hear local cases. The first circuit-style system was introduced in England in 1166 through the Assize of Clarendon, a series of judicial reform ordinances instituted by King Henry II. The practice allowed writs of assize (a sitting of a court of justice) to be tried in locations outside of Westminster in London. In 1215, the Magna Carta expanded upon this reform to provide that certain cases be tried annually by county judges.
The circuit court system was established in America by the Judiciary Act of 1789, whereby Congress created a system of circuit courts organized by judicial district and assigned to judicial circuits. Rather than having separate judgeships, however, the first circuit courts consisted of a panel of two Supreme Court justices and the local U.S. district court judge. In 1801, this structure was altered to establish six federal judicial circuits, each with its own court, and authorized new judgeships to replace Supreme Court justices. (There are currently 13 circuits.)
In practice, the early American circuit system functioned by a judge riding along their circuit, whether on horseback or later by stagecoach, accompanied by a pack of lawyers. I’m sure our current crop prefers Zoom.
