First Circuit — LLMpedia

First Circuit
Court name	First Circuit
Location	Boston, Massachusetts
Established	1891
Type	Presidential nomination with Senate confirmation
Authority	United States Constitution, Article III
Appeals to	United States Supreme Court
Positions	6 active judges (plus senior judges)

Contents

First Circuit

Overview

As an Article III tribunal created under statutes enacted by United States Congress, the court hears appeals as provided by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and later legislation such as the Judiciary Act of 1891. The court's active and senior judges have been appointed by presidents including Grover Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, with confirmations by the United States Senate and advice from senators such as Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch (in inter-branch context), and regional lawmakers. Judges have originated from clerking positions for justices like Warren E. Burger, William J. Brennan Jr., Antonin Scalia, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and from roles in institutions such as Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Columbia Law School, New York University School of Law, and the Boston Bar Association.

Prominent jurists who served on the court have included appointees associated with figures such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (by influence), Felix Frankfurter (through clerical networks), and modern collaborators who later interacted with the Supreme Court of the United States like David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Court administrators have worked alongside clerks and staff from organizations such as the American Bar Association, the Federal Judicial Center, and the National Association of Attorneys General. Individual judges have had prior service in roles with the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, the Puerto Rico Department of Justice, the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, and on commissions like the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

The court has authored influential opinions touching on constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and administrative law, impacting parties like The New York Times Company (through press-climate cases), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, United Automobile Workers, Aetna Life Insurance Company, and Bank of America. Its rulings have addressed precedents from the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and statutory regimes linked to the Affordable Care Act. Decisions from the court have been cited in the Supreme Court of the United States docket, in disputes involving entities such as Google LLC, Facebook, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., and regulatory matters before the Federal Communications Commission.

The court issues precedential precedents and unpublished orders, manages panel assignments, rehearing petitions, and en banc processes, and coordinates with administrative actors such as the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the Federal Judicial Center. Case management tools interact with filings from litigants including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Scientific, and counsel from firms like Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Ropes & Gray, Goodwin Procter, and WilmerHale. The clerk's office administers schedules aligned with terms in Boston and maintains records used by scholars at institutes such as the Harvard Kennedy School and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The court's panels routinely confront circuit splits with the Second Circuit, Fourth Circuit, Ninth Circuit, and D.C. Circuit, and its judgments are subject to review by the Supreme Court of the United States. It has coordinated transfers and venue matters with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, habeas corpus applications arising from cases in Puerto Rico, and interlocutory appeals under statutes like the Federal Arbitration Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Litigants frequently include corporations such as General Electric, Raytheon Technologies, Pfizer, and public actors like the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Established by statutory reforms in the late 19th century, the court evolved alongside legal milestones including decisions responding to the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Drugs, and developments in Puerto Rican territorial jurisprudence. Its institutional history reflects appointments and jurisprudential trends linked to presidents like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon and has been documented in publications from the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Columbia Law Review.