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1 J.L. & Civ. Governance Tex. A&M 1 (2024-2025)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlwcv1 and id is 1 raw text is: SINGLE-MINDED CRITICISM OF SINGLE JUDGE DIVISIONS Senator Mitch McConnell ABSTRACT One-judge divisions are under political attack. Congressional Demo- crats have attempted to bully Texas federal district courts into changing their case assignment methods because they dislike the decisions coming out of Texas. They claim, of course, to dislike one-judge divisions because they al- low litigants to hand-pick individual districtjudges seen as particularly sym- pathetic to their claims. When the U.S. District Court for the Northern Dis- trict of Texas refused to acquiesce to Democratic demands, the Senate Ma- jority Leader and his allies turned to an unelected, unaccountable judicial bureaucracy called the Judicial Conference of the United States (JCUS) to carry out their schemes. In March 2024, the JCUS attempted to force federal district courts to adopt a random case assignment scheme for all injunctions and declarations against the government. But the JCUS is in the wrong branch of government to make binding law. Any problems with case assign- ment should be addressed by Congress-not the JCUS. But the Democratic caper that the JCUS adopted is reform for thee but not for me. It will not prevent litigants from handpicking outcomes in sympathetic districts such as the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in which 100% of the judges were nominated by Democratic presidents. Many such districts are available to liberal cause litigants. Nor will this scheme solve a real problem. Our current system already addresses erroneous district court decisions adequately and efficiently via the appellate process. Circuit courts can review district court decisions within days if necessary, and circuit court decisions can undergo rehearings and en banc review and are even subject to U.S. Supreme Court review. The system works. The actual problem-the availability of universal injunc- tions-will go on unabated until Congress or the Supreme Court puts a stop to it. 1