I.O.P. 34.1: Calendar Assignments and Panel Composition

The Clerk of Court maintains a list of mature cases available for oral argument and on a monthly basis merges those cases with a list of three-judge panels provided by a computer program designed to achieve total random selection.

The composition of each panel usually changes each day during court week except on those occasions where only one panel is sitting in a given geographical location. Every effort is made to assign cases for oral argument to judges who have had previous involvement with the case on appeal through random assignment to a preargument motion or prior appeal in the matter, but there is no guarantee that any of the judges who have previously been involved with an appeal will be assigned to a hearing panel. The varied assignment of judges to panels and the independent assignment of varied cases to panels is designed, insofar as practicable, to assure the opportunity for each judge to sit with all other judges an equal number of times, and to assure that both the appearance and the fact of presentation of particular types of cases to particular judges is avoided.