Judges on Judging: Views from the Bench

EDWARD A. TAMM
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

PAUL C. REARDON
Retired Justice, Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

To many, the Chief Justice symbolizes the Court during the years in which he presides; to some, he personifies American justice. Each year the Chief Justice must, like his colleagues, sift through thousands of petitions for review, decide cases on the merits, write opinions, and act on emergency motions from one or more circuits. In addition, he presides over all public sessions and conferences of the Court. He is responsible, when he is in the majority, for assigning the writing of Court opinions. He must see to it that the Court's work gets out, and he is responsible for a variety of "housekeeping" duties connected with the flow of cases. A variety of statutes require that he approve the hiring, termination, and setting of compensation of the Supreme Court's employees, and he is also ultimately responsible for office building security. ¹ A Regent of the Smithsonian Institution by statute, ² the Chief Justice is by tradition its Chancellor; he is also a trustee of the National Gallery of Art ³ and by tradition is a trustee of the National Geographic Society. ⁴

However, what most clearly differentiates the Chief Justice from his colleagues on the Court are his duties as head of the federal court system, which numbers 648 active and 194 senior judges and 2,836 supporting staff. By statute, he is Chairman of the Judicial Conference of the United States⁵ and Chairman of the Board of the Federal Judicial Center. ⁶ Although the entire Court has the authority to appoint and remove the Director of the Ad

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