Effort to curb judge-shopping at the federal courts explained

Announcements by little-known federal agencies rarely spark a "political firestorm," but that's what the U.S. Judicial Conference did with a March 12 proposal involving judicial orders stopping nationwide enforcement of federal policies, so-called "national injunctions." Specifically, the Conference proposed limiting plaintiffs' ability to "judge shop" to ensure that sympathetic judges would hear their requests for such injunctions. Shortly thereafter, 19 Republican senators slammed the proposals on its merits and for encroaching on legislative authority while nine Democratic senators praised it for restoring public confidence in courts, and those were only opening salvos. (The Chief Justice of the United States presides over the semi-annual meetings of the 26-judge Judicial Conference and appoints the over 200 members of its some 20 committees, almost all of them federal judges. The Conference says it "serves as the policymaking body for the federal courts," a less-than-precise summation of its actual authority.)