Administrative
Office of the U.S. Courts, The Federal Judiciary
Homepage (visited Dec. 1, 1999) http://www.uscourts.gov
The
Third Branch (Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts 1968 - present) (monthly newsletter).
Former
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger issued the first
formal report on the federal judiciary in 1970.
[60] Since his appointment to the office of
Chief Justice in 1986, Chief Justice William
H. Rehnquist has carried on the tradition. The
report itself has had many names since its inception
in 1970, but the content remains the same. [61]
Generally speaking, the report offers a synopsis
of the events of the federal judiciary over
the course of the year. For example, the most
recent report summarizes the work of the Supreme
Court, the Federal Judicial Center, the Administrative
Office of the United States Courts, and the
United States Sentencing Commission over the
past year. Finally, the report highlights the
past year’s legislative developments pertaining
to the federal judiciary and provides the annual
federal court caseload statistics. [62]
Beginning
in 1990, The Third Branch began publishing
the full-text of the Chief Justice’s report.
Before that time, The Third Branch summarized
the major points
of each report. Several legal journals have
sporadically published full-text transcripts
of the report, among them: the American Bar
Association Journal, the American
Journal of Trial Advocacy, and the Chicago
Daily Law Bulletin. [63] Not one of these
journals, however, offers a complete full-text
series of these reports. [64] For instance,
the American Journal of Trial Advocacy has
the full-text of the reports from 1978-1979
and 1992-1995. [65] Thus, the best print resource
to consult is The Third Branch, which
is an official publication of the Administrative
Office of the United States Courts. The Third
Branch advises researchers to consult the
Federal Judicial Center’s Information Services
Office for copies of reports not published in
full-text in The Third Branch. [66]
Recently,
the Federal Judicial Center began placing the
Chief Justice’s Year-End Report on the
Judiciary online. The full-text of the 1995-1998
reports can be found at The Federal
Judiciary Homepage. [67] Unfortunately,
these reports are not contained on their own
individual page; instead, a search must be performed.
By entering the keywords in the title into the
search query box, a researcher can obtain these
reports. For instance, to retrieve the 1995-1998
reports, a search for the words "chief
justice year end report federal judiciary"
pulled up twenty-six matches. One can then scan
these results for the year in question.
One
can also find the reports through the link for
The Third Branch Archive that The
Federal Judiciary Homepage maintains. One
can find an archive of the newsletters dating
back to 1995, by clicking on "publications
and directories" and then "The
Third Branch." [68] The annual reports
are usually released in January of the following
year. Thus, one can also search the archives
for the January issues to locate the report
on the Web site. For a convenient way to locate
the most recent report, check The Federal
Judiciary Homepage and click on "newsroom."
The Web site lists the reports under the "news
releases" heading and provides the most
recent report in both HTML and PDF format. [69]
