Why Supreme Court Justices Should Ride Circuit Again

As some of you may recall from my “ask the author” series in December, see here, I answered a number of questions as to why Congress should reenact circuit riding, which was a prominent (even dominant at times) aspect of the Justices’ job duties for the first 120 years or so of this country’s history.

My article discussing this issue at length (including its storied history) will appear in the June issue of the Minnesota Law Review, and I have posted the final version of the paper on SSRN, see here. One frequent reader of this blog and Supreme Court practitioner recently wrote me that it struck him that my proposal is so sensible that it probably has no chance of being enacted by Congress. Be that as it may, for a number of reasons, I think that the Court would be better off if the Justices would once again ride circuit, though I must confess that I do not propose that they do so on horseback or by carriage or stick gig.