Familiar battle lines and talking points resurfaced yesterday as a congressional hearing delved into the possibility of splitting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the nation's largest court in terms of caseload, territory, and population governed, the National Law Journal reported. The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet hosted three Ninth Circuit judges—Chief Judge Sidney Thomas and Judges Carlos Bea and Alex Kozinski — all of whom favor keeping the 29-judge circuit as is, and two academics, John Eastman of Chapman University and Brian Fitzpatrick of Vanderbilt University Law School, who advocate creating a new circuit. While the judges touted the economies of scale and increased technological resources that the Ninth Circuit has been able to develop because of its size, the professors pointed to statistics showing an increased number of summary and unanimous reversals of Ninth Circuit opinions at the U.S. Supreme Court. Vanderbilt's Fitzpatrick testified that the court's size creates a higher probability that outlier panels of judges will be drawn to hear and decide a case.
