Changing of the guard at 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

SAN FRANCISCO—Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will convene in a special session this week to mark the elevation of new Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas of Billings, Montana.

Thomas, who officially assumed his new duties on Dec. 1, 2014, succeeds former Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of Pasadena, California, who had held the office since 2007.

A ceremonial passing of the gavel to mark the change in court leadership will be held today, Dec. 5, 2014, at the James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco. For reasons of space and security, attendance at the event is by invitation. However, the ceremony will be video streamed live for viewing via the Internet, beginning about 4pm Pacific Standard Time.

For more information on event streaming, see the court website, www.ca9.uscourts.gov.

By law, selection of the chief judge of a federal circuit or district court is based on seniority and age. The most senior active judge under the age of 65 is eligible to serve as chief judge for a term of up to seven years.

As chief judge, Thomas, 61, assumes a variety of administrative responsibilities. In addition to hearing cases, he will chair two judicial policy-making bodies, the Executive Committee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit, and represent the Ninth Circuit at biannual meetings of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the judiciary’s national governing body. The chief judge also presides when an 11-judge en banc court is convened to resolve cases posing intra-circuit legal conflicts or to consider other matters deemed to be of exceptional importance.

A native of Bozeman, Montana, Thomas received his B.A. from Montana State University in 1975 and his J.D. from the University of Montana School of Law, graduating with honors in 1978. Prior to coming onto the federal bench, he had been in private practice in Billings from 1978 to 1995. He also was as an adjunct instructor of law at Rocky Mountain College in Billings from 1982 to 1995.

Thomas is married to attorney Martha Sheehy, a former president of the State Bar of Montana, who practices law in Billings. They have two children.

Kozinski steps down after a successful seven-year term in which the court greatly expanded the use of technology to improve operations and make the judicial process more accessible to the public. Among many noteworthy advances during his tenure, the court completed its migration to electronic case filing with more than 70,000 attorneys currently registered to use the system, and expanded the use of cameras in the courtroom, becoming the first and currently only federal appellate court to live video stream oral arguments on the Internet.

The Ninth Circuit encompasses Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, the U.S. Territory of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. (PR)